A hero lies in you

Day 39/365

So when you feel like hope is gone
Look inside you and be strong
And you’ll finally see the truth
That a hero lies in you

Inspired by the song “Hero” by Mariah Carey.

I have really lost my reading habit thanks to the idiot box, so I was reading about how to get back your reading habit (ironical huh? :P). My plan is to go to the library ,pick up some light read and make myself finish the book this time. (I have been returning books after reading a few pages :(). Any suggestions on fast reads???

Cyclone ,Cyclone, go away

Day 16/365

There was a cyclone that hit my hometown (Chennai,India) few days ago and my heart goes out to all those lost their homes or family members.

I hope 2012 is natural disaster free year for the entire world.

Run away and save your life

For the first part of the story, go here

Maya just wanted to get out of there and get back home. She started running through the woods hoping to find some way out of there,but this just seemed to be getting deeper her into the woods .She had been too focused on finding a way back home that she did not notice the strange things around her.The woods was covered with snow and she had no jacket on,but she was not feeling cold. She had been plunging her feet into snow with every step but it seemed to stay dry.This frightened her even more and she started to run again.

To be continued….

The title is borrowed from song I used to listen to when I was in school. Runaway I miss those days when I saved up to buy cassettes. Now cassettes are as extinct as dinosaurs!!! So much has changed!

Texture – Pareeerica

Winterovers

It has been snowing on and off for the past 4 days! Grrr and Brrrr!
All the snow outside made me think of Antarctica and I was randomly browsing when I stumbled upon this site which has Antarctica slang.. According to the site,
Winterovers – Any one who stays on an Antarctic base for the whole of the winter

It has other funny slang. The two that I liked the most are
Three-hundred-club – To belong, you need to go through 300 degrees Fahrenheit, this is achieved by rolling naked outside in a chilly Antarctic temperature and then going inside to hit the sauna ( I definitely don’t want to become a member :))
Greenout – The emotion felt on seeing and smelling green things (plants) again after an extended period on the ice.( This must suck!!!)

This is another edit that I liked. This is my second favorite.

The bokeh texture is from Gordana AM

Brick Lane

This portrait was inspired by the book (which then became a movie) Brick Lane. It is about a young small town Bangladeshi girl who moves to London with her much older husband.She is trapped in her apartment and a loveless marriage which slowly kills her soul.
This image is how I imagine it would be when she for the first time steps out in the snow- Fascinated ,but in her somber way. I used the pixel bender option in PS for the first time in this image.

Yesterday, I woke up with this obsession to do a portrait. But, I opened the windows to find a pile of snow. Accoring to weather.com it was going to snow all day long . This, somehow did not shake my resolve! I wore a sari( I am still not good with tying the sari which made walking so hard!! :)),layered up and stepped out.

This is was the only sort of clean pathway to go to the nearby park

I think the city decided to just concentrate on the roads!!It makes sense because I don’t think they expect anyone to really go to a park when it is snowing 🙂

Most paths were like this-

All the dipping my feet in the snow was making my toes cold and I was starting to get scared that I might get a frost bite!

Thankfully, the park was quite nearby

I was worried about my lens ,so I placed a hat on top of my camera and that really helped!But, I still wanted to be done soon for the sake of my lens and my feet.

I quickly took few shots and rushed back home.I soaked my feet in hot water for a while and that really helped.

I almost did not post the final picture because I was not 100% happy with it. But, I thought my feet deserved a post 🙂 .

The wrath of Theia

Many have already used the Holiday lights to create beautiful portraits. But,I wanted to try my hand at it anyways.

This is my portrayal of the wrath of the goddess of light.Shooting indoors in low light is quite tricky and it took quite a few attempts to get what I wanted. I am quite happy with how this turned out. Hope you all like it too.

Just one more month for 2011 to end! I can’t believe that this year is almost over!
I hope this realization makes me get off my lazy butt and do more things 🙂

Regret is all that is there when the smoke clears

I’ve been fascinated by smoke photography and have been meaning to try it for a really long time.I found a tutorial on DPS which does not require any external flash. So, I decided to combine portrait and smoke photography.
I like the outcome but the tutorial did not work for me 😦 .I had to play around with the shutter speed and bring in a lamp to make it work.
I want to try this again some other day and get more interesting patterns in the smoke.

This was my studio for the day 🙂

Pushing Daisies

Yesterday was my birthday and G got me some daisies. It reminded me of my dead dog “Daisy”. I wish I could bring her back to life like in the show “Pushing Daisies”.Weird thoughts to have on a birthday !! :)… Anyways, that was the inspiration behind this. But, this got me thinking about how we keep changing over the years and about how maybe we should bring back to life some of the things that we buried in the name of “growing up”. For me, it would be cynicism. I want to be more of a believer and more of a dreamer. Maybe birthdays are not just for getting older and wiser. Maybe there are also for bringing back child-like traits 😛

Oh G also got me the iphone 4S. I’ve been more a Steve Jobs fan than a fan of the apple products(inspite of owning an ipod and an iphone)… But I think the 4s has made me an apple fan! I love it!!!

Fragile

We all grew up with the media constantly telling us what beauty is.This definitely affects us a lot ,especially when we were young.It definitely did affect me .My definitions of beauty were so rigid back then. As I grew up and started using my own brains, I started broadening my views on what constitutes beauty.And this also made me embrace my own insecurities.I guess I am just trying to say what has been said so many times before! That everyone is beautiful 🙂

Anyways, on a different note, I think I’ve been doing too many portraits indoors. I am hoping to venture a shoot outside this weekend. Hopefully, I won’t freeze!

Happy weekend to you all 🙂

The travellers

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” – Martin Buber

I’ve been wanting to see the Grand Canyon for a long time and I finally did during our road trip to Vegas.
It was everything I thought it would be-Majestic, peaceful and gorgeous!
We drove all night and reached the grand canyon area around 7 am. We stopped at a place that was little before the national park. It was empty and we had the canyon all to ourselves. This experience beat seeing the canyon from the different view points in the park.

I am adding hiking one of the grand canyon trails to my bucket list!

If anyone of you have done the hike, I would like to hear about it

I really love the colours in this picture of the Grand Canyon

People at a view point

This is us goofing off after a sleepless night

We also did a quick stop at the engineering marvel-The hoover dam. We did not have time so viewed it from the new walkway built above it