Auto-focus!? Dude Seriously?

This is what I usually get when I tell a person, that my camera is on auto-focus. 

Present day D-SLRs offer the options of auto-focus and manual-focus with proper compatible lenses. Currently when your surroundings are being flooded with the apostrophe s photography pages, profiles and link-ups, you come across this lot of people who think that MANUAL FOCUS is the coolest thing EVER that a photographer can use, and if he goes on to use AUTO FOCUS, it is a crime.  

Yes, manual focus is one of the coolest things ever. But then, it is not something which will gift you split second visuals. Period. 

One of my friend came along with me on a photo outing once. It was early morning and the sun had risen and was at an acute point with the horizon. Usually this the best light to capture moments at the Thol Bird sanctuary in Gujarat. Both of us had a 70-300mm (zoom) lens mounted. Now that guy being stubborn about his methods was using manual focus. I advised him to shift to auto, since we were trying to shoot birds that change positions and come to activity less often. Since these moments don't come that often you'll definitely get a unique moment freezed on your memory card, but if you struggle with focus at that particular moment, you'll lose all the action. And at this kind of a focal length (300mm) even an inch's movement will easily lead to focus errors. To my suggestion, he gave me a smirk look and said 'Pagal hai kya?' (Are you mad or what?). We settled and positioned our cameras. After 15 mins approx. the flamingos we aimed at came to action. I immediately shot the sequence in a continuous shot AF mode. After we were done, the guy finally did realize the importance of auto-focus.

I am not against the idea of using manual focus. But using it at the wrong places and being proud about it, is foolish. 

Here are some moments that I probably would have missed, if it wasn't for auto-focus. 

The strike

When I started off, and started seeing pictures around me, I just blindly used the Auto or the Scene mode and let the camera do the rest. I never ever knew what the 'M' on the dial was capable of! All of this was when my father brought home a fancy new camera with a staggering zoom rate of 26x and bunch of other cool features. It was  a semi-pro Olympus point and shoot. It still had the manual mode and you could use the camera the way you wanted, but then me being a dumb struck about it, never discovered. 

One day I was trying to capture the moon and it's craters, because my camera had such a ridiculous zoom range. It would just appear as a white spot. That night I went haywire over the camera's controls. And I 'luckily' (and to this day, I thank my over curious state) tuned into 'M'. And then I see all these numbers at the bottom of the screen. One gave me a fraction. It was 1/250 default. The other display had a lowercase 'f' and a decimal count beside it. Set to f5.6 by default. And the third said ISO100. 

Now I have absolutely no idea what all of this means. But as I pressed the navigation keys on the cam, these numbers changed. And as the numbers changed, I started experimenting. And finally (I still did not know what the numbers mean) at 1/1000, f8.0 and IS0400, I got this.

I then found out  from that day and on, that photography actually resides on these numbers. Being the most important part of constituting an exposure for your image, these were the building blocks for it.

Now I had been following this guy named Auditya Venkatesh at that point of time, and he had been posting some mind blowing stuff to his page about photography. And to date he has always inspired me. Auditya had also been posting some informative articles about photography on his website. So I came across this article which explained shutter speed, ISO and Aperture. And boy, he wrote it so well, he could have slipped it by a four year old. And that day I FINALLY understood what all of those numbers meant. 

From that very day on, I have rarely dialed on the Auto or Scene. I was finally, mentally embarking towards a bright side of photography at ISO100, f5.6 & 1/500. :)

These are some pictures after the discovery of shutter speed, ISO and aperture in my stupid brain.

 A day in Bombay.

 A truck passes by on SP ring road, Ahmedabad.

Windmills at sunset, Bhavnagar, Gujarat.

After having shot the cliched picture of the moon, I was pretty sure I could shoot this too.

*All the pictures in this article have been shot by Olympus SP590uz.

Breakout of the zeal

I am Spandan Bhatt. Currently I study Graphic design and visual communication at Symbiosis Institute of Design Pune. I have immense passion for photography and have an extreme inclination towards travelling, be it by any means. 

From childhood to date, me and my family have traveled a lot. Starting since when I was a kid, my family has been taking me places throughout India, our own Incredible India. But the idea of how 'Incredible' it was, was just at it's germination point. 

I realized that wherever I am going, every nook and corner of the place has it's own timeless story to tell. I was already fascinated with the diverse cultures and the amazing stories that each place I visited narrated to me. But how do I ensemble everything so that it STAYS with me and my family, everywhere I go? That is when the notion of PHOTOGRAPHY set in to me. 

I got my first camera, a Kodak KB10 film when I was to go for a camp at 'Polo Forest' in Gujarat. I started making pictures since then. I was just 11 though and had a really vague view towards photography as an art. I never even thought about it.

This was one of the first images that I shot at Polo. I was 11 years old.

After 3 to 4 more camps down the road, I developed great interest in trekking, hiking, and mountaineering as well. I started going to a lot of camps through Youth Hostels Association India, WWF India and Anala outdoors. 

After experiencing all of these outdoor activities, me and my family started touring again, each and every vacation. By this time, we bought a high range zoom point and shoot by Olympus. This camera gave me a lot more exposure towards photography as an art. I started exploring different angles, exposures, tips and tricks and a lot came from trial and error. 

A person's highest amount of motivation, comes from appreciation. The stuff I clicked was being appreciated by my friends and family and I started to dive more into this particular art form.

An Image I shot at Teesta River, Sikkim. I was 14 years old.

Results kept getting better as I gained experience with the Olympus. By this time, I started putting watermarks on the Images I produced. 

Further on, as I grew older, MASSES of people were taking up photography as a profession and started creating means to reach an audience through social media to get recognized. Needless to say, I followed the pack. I fired up my own page 'Spandan Bhatt's photography' and started posting pictures to it. 

At some point of time, my frequency of posting went stagnant and I started posting stuff on my personal profile, because people were noticing it there, rather than the page. 

Today I go clicking with an APS-C DSLR by Sony. To date, I have never taken any sort of formal education to develop my photography skill set. I have always explored with trial and error. 

I start this blog today, to tell you about my experiences to come and the experiences I have had so far in clicking whatever I have and possess today. 

 Lake Pichola, Udaipur. Shot in 2011, me being 16 years old.