Make your own future

Make your own future, originally uploaded by £$þ.

Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders.
Know that you are the creator of your own destiny.
All the strength and succor you want is within yourselves.
Stand up. Be bold. Be strong.
Make your own future.

This world ain't just rainbows ...

This world ain't just rainbows ..., originally uploaded by £$þ.

Life is not just colors all the time ...
Every small thing is a puzzle yet to be solved ...
The real win of life is to crack that puzzle!

Who in the world am I? Ah, now that's the great puzzle.
~ Lewis Carroll

Monday Blues?

Monday Blues?, originally uploaded by £$þ.

At least not to me after seeing how extreme-risky conditions people work to earn their livelihood!

The different blues of the building and the slightly overcast sky, the rays of sun from behind the building, those cleaning workers and the lines running through the building formed an idea behind this shot. Hope you like it !

Wish you a nice week ahead !!

Warming up ...

Warming up ..., originally uploaded by £$þ.

... both body and mind to enjoy this pleasant winter morning! What are you up to?

Have a wonderful Sunday everyone!!

Bathed in red - Ixora

Bathed in red - Ixora, originally uploaded by £$þ.

Macro of Ixora flower.

Satyameva Jayate

Satyameva Jayate, originally uploaded by £$þ.

Satyameva Jayate - It means "Truth Alone Triumphs".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyameva_Jayate

Macro shot of an Indian 1 rupee currency. Another POV

The stare

The stare, originally uploaded by £$þ.

Sometimes its hard to decipher what they mean!!

Love ...

Love ..., originally uploaded by £$þ.

Take away love and our earth is a tomb.
~ Robert Browning

Taken at Qutb Shahi Tombs, Hyderabad.

1,2,3 .. Care to feel the nature?

1,2,3 .. Care to feel the nature?, originally uploaded by £$þ.

After the single butterfly picture I posted couple of days back, I thought of doing a collage with other 2 pictures I had of the same butterfly.

I named it 1,2,3 for what it is :-) Not many times that we stop and pay attention to tiny things and patterns around us. Thanks to the 3rd eye, we photographers pay little more attention to things around us than others :-)

Have a nice week ahead!!

Eid Mubarak!

Eid Mubarak!, originally uploaded by £$þ.

A collage of different pictures I took yesterday in the famous Charminar area of Hyderabad.

It was really amazing to see thousands of people out in the market shopping for their big festival.

Need for solitude!

Need for solitude!, originally uploaded by £$þ.

Oh boy! Last 2 weeks were like hell for me at work. Was loaded and loaded with work. At one point I decided I really need a break!

I quickly packed my bags and left for a trek. Far away, really far away from the computers and work. And guess what I did there? Just slept in the middle of the jungle enjoying the company of these colorful butterflies :) Nature has its own way of recharging us!

Bidri, an exquisite art in making

Bidri, an exquisite art in making, originally uploaded by £$þ.

Bidri is an art from Bidar, located in Karnataka, India. Bidri is a form of surface ornamentation in black colors, which never fades and is coated with silver and gold coverings.

Gunmetal, which is an alloy of Zinc and Copper is used for Bidri. The manufacturers use various moulds to give shape to the gun metal. Saline mud is kept out of sun light and air for almost 100 years and is used as oxidizing agent to give shine to the metal.

The Bidri designs are usually patterns such as the Asharfi-ki-booti, stars, vine creepers and stylized poppy plants with flowers. Traditional designs include the Persian Rose and passages from the Quran in Arabic script.

Flower vases, Cigar and Jewellery boxes and Huqqa buttons are the most sought after products of Bidri craft. Items like key chains, cuff links, paper weights, and paper knives are other Bidri craft which are used as gift articles.

For more information on this artwork, check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidri

Boudhanath

Boudhanath, originally uploaded by £$þ.

This is famous Boudhanath temple in Kathmandu, Nepal. I visited this temple to offer prayers before embarking on my trekking trip to the base camp of Mt.Everest.

I wanted a totally different perspective of the temple and hence this particular view with prayer flags covering one half of the frame and the stupa covering the other. Since there are variety of colors in this picture, thought of doing a HDR to bring them out. Let me know your views/feedbacks on this.

Boudhanath is one of the holiest Buddhist sites in Kathmandu, Nepal. Located in the northeastern outskirts of Kathmandu, the stupa's massive mandala makes it one of the largest spherical stupas in Nepal. As of 1979, Boudhanath is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Along with Swayambhunath, it is one of the most popular tourist sites in the Kathmandu area.

To know more about this place, refer
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudhanath

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

F.R.I.E.N.D.S, originally uploaded by £$þ.

Portrait of 2 boys sitting in front of Madarsa in Bidar.

View in Color. Which one suits better - The monochrome or the color?

Story of a bygone era

Story of a bygone era, originally uploaded by £$þ.

Last weekend I got a quick chance to visit Bidar, a small city in the North Eastern part of Karnataka.

Bidar was one of the most prosperous cities of south India during the period of 11th century to 16th century.

The first Rashtrakuta capital, Mayurkhandi, was in Bidar district. The regal capital was later moved by Amoghavarsha I to Manyakheta in the present Gulbarga district.

Kalyani (today called Basavakalyan, after Basaveshwara) in Bidar district was the capital of Western Chalukyas, who were also called Kalyani Chalukyas after their capital. The Kalachuris continued with Kalyani as their capital.

Later, Bidar was ruled in succession by the Sevuna Yadavas of Devagiri and the Kakatiyas of Warangal, before being invaded by the armies of Allauddin Khilji, Malik Kafur and Muhammad bin Tughluq.

Cheers!!

Cheers!!, originally uploaded by £$þ.

Cheers!! because the weekend is quick approaching :)

Oh btw today is Just because day :)

Ganesh Chaturthi

Ganesh Chaturthi, originally uploaded by £$þ.

Festivals are the time of best of colors and the best of food.
Today we celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi, the birthday of Hindu god Ganesha. This is a collage that I made out of pictures which describe the essence of this festival. If you want to know more about this festival, give it a good read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesh_Chaturthi

The morning Chai

The morning Chai, originally uploaded by £$þ.

Y'day morning was so beautiful here in Hyderabad. It rained almost after a month (in a level to satisfy the entire month's quota). The morning was so pleasant & nice and well complemented my daily dose of Chai !!

Hope all of you are enjoying a great week ...

As colorful as it gets ...

As colorful as it gets ..., originally uploaded by £$þ.

Today I was just browsing the pictures from my recent Nepal trip. This one just caught my eyes for its virtue of colors.

These peacock feathers were kept for sale near Pashupatinath temple. As such they are very colorful and with those colorful ropes in the background giving tough competition to them, it wasn't a tough decision for me to frame them both together :-)

Am sure your week is moving as colorful as this! If not, just smile at yourself and kick start a colorful day because its just one more day to go for the weekend ;-)

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

The Stare

I know its been a long time here for me! I've been so regular on Flickr these days and kinda kept this space idle for no reason. Will try to link this blog with my Flickr account so that my regular posts there are published here as well.

My today's post is about "Stare". I generally like photographing people who stare right into my camera. In one of my recent trips, I saw this old villager with a colorful attire, sitting in a tea stall and staring at my camera (as any villager would). I took that chance to my favor and captured her natural expressions. At first I was scared how the villagers would take it. But to my surprise later, everyone around also wanted to get their photograph taken :)

Have a colorful week ahead !!

Please let me know your feedbacks/comments/critiques on this photograph (Will certainly help me improve).

PS: If you are on Flickr, please add me as your contact so that I can enjoy your wonderful pictures and learn from them as well!

Splish Splash Splatter

Shooting water droplets is something that I wanted to do for a long time now. But given the fact that I don't have a minimal required setup like external flash or quality macro lens, this subject remained in my "want-to-do" list for a long time now.

Yesterday there was no water supply in my appartment (thanks to the dry summer and yet to come monsoon) and water just started to drip from the tap. Suddenly I got this idea of photographing the droplets! But how? without a macro lens and external flash? Well, I thought I'll give a try with my telephoto lens (at maximum zoom) and my internal (camera's in-built) flash.

My zero-costly, zero-fancy setup is quiet simple ... well in my case the scene was already set for me :-)

1. Bucket of water kept under the tap and water dripping slowly and steadily into the bucket (was actually the scene in my case :-P)
2. Water in the bucket lighted by a Tungsten bulb in the room (am sure you will have one lighting your room already).
3. My camera fitted with a telephoto lens (Canon 55-250mm) at 250mm zoom mounted in a tripod for steady focus (don't expect me to lend my camera or lens :P).

Seriously that's it for my setup! Now coming to the execution part ...

Using camera's auto-focus I focussed the point where the droplet was hitting the water in the bucket (by keeping a pencil at that point) . Once the focus was set properly, I switched the lens to manual-focus. I set the camera to shutterpriority mode (Tv) with a shutter speed of 1/200 seconds and to burst in continous mode. With camera's inbuilt flash on and ready, I was ready to click the droplets in no time.

After some trial and error attempts I got hold of the timing of the droplets fall and started to record some falling droplets. Here are some of the shots from my first attempt to capture "more-closeup-than-macro-water droplets". Colors obtained here are using differnt whitelight balance settings in my camera. I am planning to experiment more with lighting and colors later during the weekend. Till then enjoy these macro-of-droplets and feel free to comment/provide feedback.

Blue tornado

Balancing in the needle end

Exclamation mark!

A droplet figurine

Splish, splash and splatter

Ball on the bottle top

Note: Of course my setup is very limited or perhaps not qualified as even one :P. If you have access to a good quality macro lens, better lighting and external flash (speedlite or equivalent versions), you can get stunning macros of droplets.

NH7 Highway Trip

Last Sunday me and my shutterbug colleagues and friends decided to go on a highway trip to capture some of the typical highway-side scenes. This was different from my earlier photo-walks because we used to have fixed place/time for our sessions earlier. This time we wanted to experiment randomly on different subjects/places with no actual guarantee on the availability of subjects.

NH7 highway was selected (This highway actually runs from Kanyakumari to Srinagar. We chose the bit from Hyderabad to Nizamabad for our trip) and we hit the road on Sunday. Some of the pictures from my highway trip ...

The mango garden

The mango garden security


Motilal the Mango seller


Mango seller's daughter




I am very hungry ...


It's play time


Sunflower Garden - My floral bed says the bee ..


It's a never ending quest for honey ..


Anything in there?








Mango - Looks yummy isn't it?


Kid from the mango garden


Framed ..


Farm land ...


Jai bajrangabali


It's my land!


Highway upto the horizon ..


Cultivation land


Sunset seen in the car's rear window

Location: NH7 Highway (Stretch from Hyderabad to Nizamabad)