Introduction
Programming tasks are difficult and time consuming. When I cannot solve certain problems or I realize that there are many things to be done, I usually put my work aside and pick up other things to play with until I have the right kind of mood to go on. Recently my work on Pāli Platform 3 has been decelerated for months because I have to think hard to redesign the program’s structure. This often exhausts me.
Meanwhile I have been learning about photographing as a way of defocusing my work and making some fun. And here are the product of 3 months or so of this activity. My gear consists of cheap mobile phones and old digital SLR cameras with some lenses. These work fine for me. However, it is not about shooting alone because mostly the photos taken are manipulated somehow (at least, by cropping and color adjustment) using computer programs before being used. Tackling these programs is also a kind of fun to me.
Here are main programs used. For quick adjustments, I use gThumb and Fotoxx (now called Fotocx). For more refined manipulations, GIMP is the best. Sometimes I shoot in raw format, a little overkill for me, and use LightZone or simply nUFRaw, also but rarely Darktable and RawTherapee. For making panoramic images, Hugin is mostly used, sometimes also Fotoxx (which is better for some cases). All these show that we do not really need Photoshop for such workflow.
To make the photos usable, I make them as desktop wallpapers by 1920 x 1080 pixels (16:9). Many of photos are heavily manipulated. For some other photos and short stories, please also see Bhaddacak’s Memoir. All images here are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. The users can save the images directly by their browser.
Notes on effects used: Every image here is altered somehow. You will never see raw photos right from the cameras. Apart from real pictures, I often put some effects on the pictures because they look better in some way, if not to conceal personal identity in case of people’s images. The most used effect is Waterpixels filter in GIMP. This can nicely imitate watercolor painting. Similarly, Painting effect in Fotoxx can do likewise but in a simpler way, but sometimes the result looks better or good in a different way. Occasionally I use Oilify filter in GIMP, which makes pictures look like oil painting, but I find the effect looks too close to the original. These three effects, when used, will be marked as Waterpixels, Painting, and Oilify respectively. Other kinds of manipulation will not be explained in detail because they involve a more complicated process.
The standing Buddha
Now move to the subject, the standing Buddha is a statue located at the monastery near a mountain I live by now. In fact, it is not a beautiful or spectacular one. However, we have ways to make it look interesting. This is my most shot subject and I may have hundreds of its photos. So, I select some of them to show here.
With the moon
Photographing the Buddha with the moon is a bit tricky because we hardly have enough light. It is also hard to make the right focus even a tripod is used. Moreover, without a good telephoto lens we cannot get the moon in relatively big enough size. The first photo and its derivatives is in a full moon day (the moon is enlarged by retouching), the second one have a crescent (the Buddha also has a good smiling face). Because the Buddha statue is not in a good condition as shown in the real photo below, I have to use some effects to make it more interesting.
The Buddha and a full moon as shot
The Buddha and a full moon 1 (Painting)
The Buddha and a full moon 1 (Oilify)
The Buddha and a crescent moon
The Buddha and a crescent moon (Painting)
The Buddha and a crescent moon (Waterpixels)
Recently, I have shot the Buddha and the full moon again. This time I have better preparation and no retouching is needed. Here is the result.
The Buddha and a full moon 2
The Buddha and a full moon 2 (edge highlighting)
Against the sky
When the sky is clear or has clouds, it is enough to make the Buddha look interesting like the following pictures.
The Buddha and the sky 1 (Painting)
The Buddha and the sky 2 (Oilify)
The Buddha and the sky 3 (Oilify)
The Buddha and the sky 4 (Painting)
The Buddha and the sky 5 (backlit)
The Buddha and the sky 6 (clear sky)
The Buddha and the sky 7 (Waterpixels)
At dusk and dawn
For photographers, there are golden hours in each day, at sunrise and sunset, because only at this time we can get red color from the sky. However, the sky is not equally beautiful everyday. By the location of the Buddha, shooting pictures in the morning is usually better. The colors in the following images may look exaggerated because the Buddha is better made silhouette or low-key in such a scene.
The Buddha at a sunset 1
The Buddha at a sunset 2
The Buddha at a sunrise 1
The Buddha at a sunrise 2 (Painting)
The Buddha at a sunrise 2 (Waterpixels)
The Buddha at a sunrise 3
The Buddha at a sunrise 3 (Painting)
The Buddha at a sunrise 3 (Waterpixels)
Against the mountain
I have made several panoramic pictures related to the standing Buddha. Since we have a limited view for desktop wallpapers, I just show a few of them here in cropped view.
The Buddha against the mountain 1 (Painting)
The Buddha against the mountain 2 (Waterpixels)