Relief

Yes, that's the pony, er...relieving himself. Actually, due to the high donkey traffic in these remote areas (for carrying supplies, etc) there's a lot of poop along the trails. You soon learn to avoid it, though sometimes, especially in populated areas, there's just too much of it NOT to step into some. :D Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

High desert

If there's one thing I can impart to the aspiring landscape photographer it's this -- foreground, foreground, foreground! Most people tend to shoot, say, the mountains, but forget all about the foreground. In wideangle landscape shots, it's really important to include some foreground interest to lead the viewer into the picture. In this case, I framed the shot so that the interesting rocks and brush dominated the lower half of the shot. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Great yarn

Here's a shot of the rolls (they're certainly not balls) of yarn used to make the scarves below. The scarves are made on the loom that you see a little bit of in the background. Shot cropped of course. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Scarves

Although it looks like a hot desert, Muktinath is in fact pretty cold all throughout the day, owing to the high altitude. In fact, frost develops on the ground overnight, and during winter, it snows. Scarves are made and sold by the people here to cater to tourists (like me) who came unprepared. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Zig zag

I was fascinated by this zig zag road going through the mountains. At nearly 3800 metres, Muktinath is very remote and nearly inaccessible by large vehicles. Most transport is via donkey or pony. However, some motorcycles have actually been airlifted to one of the lower towns and this serves as alternative transport to people here. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Went up a hill, came down a mountain

Being behind the camera all the time, I don't usually appear in photos much, but on this trip, I made a conscious effort to have myself photographed at various sites just to prove I've been there. This shot was taken at our lodge for the night at Muktinath, our last stop on our trekking trip. The light coming from behind us was actually very, very strong, and to ensure that you could see our faces, I set my camera to provide a short burst of flash to fill in the shadows. The trick here is to make the flash NOT look like a flash -- flash at full power would have been a little unnatural, so I set my flash to shoot a weaker burst using a flash exposure compensation value of -1.7EV, which produced a more natural result. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Chairs and tables

A shot I intentionally shot in B+W with my D200. While it's really easy to turn photos into B+W in Photoshop later, I sometimes like shooting directly in B+W in camera so I can immediately see the result. The cool thing about the Nikon D200 (and also D80 and my old Fujifilm S2 Pro) is that it has a B+W mode. Even cooler is that since I shoot in RAW mode, the colour information is still retained in the file and I can simply turn the colour back on in the Nikon Capture software later. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR.

Muktinath

This is a panorama of the final destination on our long trek, Muktinath temple, a Hindu and Buddhist temple situated just south of the Thorong-la high mountain pass. The image was joined from two images which I just shot handheld then joined in Photoshop. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Portrait

A whimsical portrait of our porter, Bhorje (I hope I got the spelling right). Bhorje was great -- in his own quiet way he was always looking out for us and could carry a load of our stuff as if it weighed nothing. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6
NB: Changed the name to correct spelling in this post.

Mountain view

The final mountain view of the mountains as we flew out from Jomsom back to Pokhara. Looking back at these mountains, it's ironic that what took us about 12 days and over 120km of trekking only takes 18minutes by plane. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Boats

A closeup of the boats on Fewa lake. If there's one thing I remember about Nepal is that everything is brightly coloured. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Boat lady

While this is an acceptable shot, I can't help but feel that it could have been better -- the framing and expression is just a little off somewhow. Oh well, you can't win all the time. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Getting there

There're tons of boats which ply the short distance between the the shore and the temple in the middle of Fewa lake in Pokhara. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Lady of the Lake

Fewa Lake is the second largest lake in Nepal with many hotels and guest houses situated right on its banks. In the middle of the lake is a small island with a Hindu temple which is quite busy all throughout the week. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Final day

There's of course nothing arty about this shot -- it's just a shot of the Delima restaurant we hung out at on our last day in Kathmandu. The place is recommended by the Lonely Planet guide to Nepal and the food is truly excellent and prices reasonable.
Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR

In The Hand

Although I posted this last in a series of photos of the same flower, this is actually the first shot I took. This was taken right at the park where I picked up the flowers, with my friend holding the flower. Here, obviously, some post-processing took place, as I desaturated the background to turn it into a black and white image while leaving the flower in colour. Interestingly, these hibiscus-like flowers range from yellow to a more reddish tone, as in this shot. This flower was taken from the same tree that produced the yellowish ones. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR 

Self portrait

This self-portrait was done by simply shooting a reflection of myself in a big metal pot at Ikea. The reason the lettering on my shirt and camera come out right is that I flipped the image horizontally in Photoshop. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6

Twins

Here's the challenge I set myself: choose a single subject and spend and evening shooting and try to come up with as many different shots as possible of that subject. In this case, it's a few flowers I picked up off the ground at the local park. This is my favourite shot of the series -- not only is it not cropped, but the exposure is exactly as I intended it to be. In this shot I wanted the flowers to appear like mirror images of each other, with each pointing a petal into the corner of the frame -- quite symmetrical. I also like the way the flowers look so translucent with the strong light coming through them. Nikon D200, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Merry widows

One of the goals I set myself in taking these flower photos was to pay attention to the framing as I look through the viewfinder so that in the final picture, I would have to crop as little as possible, if at all. I largely succeeded, except for this one, which I shot with the intention of cropping it into this square image. Nikon D200, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Disraeli Gears

Arranged in this way, these flowers (in the Hibiscus family I think) remind me of gears. These shots were generally taken with an aperture of around f/22 for maximum depth-of-field. While I've often said that you can take a good picture no matter what camera you use, in this case, using a DSLR does make things easier as it allows you more control over aperture, flash and choice of lens for macro work. Nikon D200, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Standing in line

The set up for all these flower shots is very simple -- just like the crystal shots, this was merely an Ikea breakfast-in-bed table that's an opaque white. A wireless flash (controlled by the camera's built-in flash) under this table provided nearly even white lighting while the on-camera flash provided some added fill-in light from the front. Nikon D200, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Trinity

Ever since I took up photography something like twenty years ago, I've always been interested in macro work -- taking photos of bugs and plants has always fascinated me. This shot is taken much like the ones above. Nikon D200, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Cross section

The same set up as before, but this time a closeup of a crystal in cross section. Nikon D200, AF-Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Crystals

Taking a shot like this required me to light the bottom and the top at the same time. The table used for this shot is simply an Ikea foldable table (for breakfast in bed) -- the table is made of some opaque white plastic. The light at the bottom was provided by the Nikon SB-600 flash in wireless mode placed under the table, and the frontal lighting was provided by the camera's own built-in flash -- here performing double duty controlling the SB-600 wirelessly AND providing fill-in light for the crystals. Nikon D200, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm F/2.8

HUUUG!

Yes more pictures of my dog. Taking nice pictures of dogs, as you may well imagine, is not as easy as it looks, since they are so hyperactive. The only secret is patience. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR