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Welcome to the vedphoto blog! Here you can keep up-to-date on research (Fluid Lensing), exhibitions (Physics In Vogue and Reactive Reefs) and photo-shoots. Learn about the techniques and stories behind my images by searching for a location or keyword. That picture of fruit bats from Northern Madagascar - I had to wade waist-high in bat guano to get it! Always a humbling experience. Masai Mara Village, Kenya
In a traditional Kenyan Masai village, cattle farming is not only at the center of their way of life but also literally at the center of where they live. For the sake of protecting their animals from wild predators, individual family huts are built to tightly encircle their livestock field. Ved came to the Masai Mara village when doing a photo shoot for the nonprofit, Samasource. He traveled to the location over night so that he could capture the setting right at sunrise when the quality of light was at its very best, and the mud fields would glow a golden red. In this photo, Ved used HDR imaging in connection with stereographic projection of over 5000 shots stitched into a composite image. Look in every direction to see the way Masai homes surround the cattle field. To see more about the making of this image, click here. Ankarana Plateau Tsingy
The stony face of the Ankarana Reserve is uniquely and immediately recognizable. It boasts gigantic limestone massifs worn and shaped by the heavy Madagascar rains over hundreds of millions of years. Throughout the reserve the erosion has created large landscapes filled with pointy pinnacles known as “tsingy.” The term comes from the local Malagasy word for tiptoeing, evoking the way one might traverse the terrain by hopping from one stone spire to the next. In this image, a full 360 degree panorama of the Ankarana terrain is in view. Vast fields of the tsingy stretch as far as the eye can see, while the foreground displays the furrowed limestone textures in fine detail. Look close and you can make out fossil shells within the stone.
The incredibly fine resolution (> 1000 Megapixels) of this image was made possible through a process of synthesizing over 5000 images into a 360° map, which is projected onto an equirectangular plane.
To see more about the making of this image, click here.
Ramena Beach, Madagascar
To capture this shot, Ved waded nearly a half kilometer through the shallow shelf of Ramena beach to a point where he set up his equipment in neck-deep water. His effort proved to be worthwhile when he captured this image of the fishing village’s white sand beaches set against the pristine emerald waters. The area surrounding Ramena beach is known as Les Trois Baies, or the three bays, at the northern-most tip of Madagascar. It lies near the point where the Mozambique Channel meets the Indian Ocean. This panoramic shot represents a composite of over 5000 shots taken from one position as the camera rotated a full 360°. This synthesis approach allows the image to provide incredibly clear views in every direction. To see more about the making of this image, click here.
NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building
Twelve months ago one of the most iconic 20th-Century figures—the Space Shuttle—was finally retired. Apart from its legacy of science and exploration, the Space Shuttle inspired generations of children who grew up with the image of it arcing upwards into the blue sky atop its orange external fuel tank and solid-rocket booster. With the shuttle program abandoned, the Vehicle Assembly Building remains as a monument to this legendary 30 year run. The world’s largest single-story building, its sheer massiveness alone is impressive. But vastly more important, this is the workshop where the world’s most technologically sophisticated vehicles were assembled; where precision, invention and ambition led to ever greater scientific feats. These views of the VAB were captured using a combination of processes including high dynamic range imaging as well as stereographic projection. To see more about the making of this image, click here.
NASA's Orbiter Processing Facility
After a successful mission, after the exterior ceramic tiles were largely charred from the crucible of re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, NASA’s space shuttles were hardly discarded. These space vehicles were engineered for reuse. But with over a million moving parts, each fundamental to the success and safety of the crew, the process of maintenance and preparation for each new flight was an extremely daunting task. It was within the Orbiter Processing Facility that painstaking effort was put into checking each part of the shuttle’s systems, ensuring that the space craft was ready to safely fly again. On average, three months of exhaustive inspection would go into each shuttle, during which time worn and defective parts would be replaced. The recently retired space shuttle Discovery completed 39 successful missions, attesting to the excellence achieved in this hangar. This image was captured from above the facility floor, using a composite of over 5000 photographs shot in every direction. To see more about the making of this photo, click here. |
