Wordless Wednesday - 7

Example of a "Meaningless" post

A hectic day at work - skipped my lunch and ended up crawling into the kitchen after work just to find nothing.  Too busy and too tired today, but managed some simple dinner.  And then I realised "Dammit today is not a Wednesday".  Had it been a Wednesday, I would lousily posted a picture and attempted to write no word on them.  Why there's no Wordless Tuesdays! 

Value of life!

We hardly realise the importance of a person when they are with us.  We neglect to show them the love, affection and care amidst the busy life.  And one unfortunate day, when we realize that the person is no more, we regret and talk about how much we miss them and love them.  I'm not scourging over and say this is wrong. But had we told this when the person is with us, they would have felt really happy isn't' it?

The ongoing dilemma

I'm in a total dilemma whether to remain in blogger or move over to wordpress or to have own domain.  

I've thought over this for about 1 million times, and still can't make out what I should be doing.  It seems like a tough decision to move away from blogger.  
I created an account few months back in wordpress, but never moved because I was too lazy or too loyal to blogger - don't know :(

What would you vote for?  Blogger or Wordpress? 
Please help me decide on this..
PS: Thanks to all those who voted for me in the previous contest.  It means so much to me. thanks again :)

Photography Gyan # 7 (General)

If you are serious about improving your photography skills, another basic thing you need to do is share your pictures. And don't expect people to write "beautiful, lovely" or relevant adjectives, but some really good critics on your photography.  I'm not a great photographer, but I aspire to become one. If you do want to, you need to open your pictures for comments and critics.

The one who painted the story!!

Travelling is so much fun.  But what give more gratification at the end are the pleasant memories that we carry along with us.  Be a roman while you are in Rome.  It does stand true.  To experience a real taste of a city or a village, a little conversation with the local people is essential and it does marvels to the whole experience you get.

Thursday Challenge - TWO

This week's prompt is "TWO" (people, animal, flowers, pillow, candle,building etc)and I jumped from my bed in such a happiness that I have loads of pictures matching this prompt, but again sulked back.  Coz, I just recently posted so many duo pictures around Valentine's day (here, here and here) and now I run short of them :( 

So decided to post a personal picture for this week's TC.  

Edited on 24/02/12 to add the below information:-
This is taken along the Jurassic Coast along English Channel on the southern part of England (Dorset).  Known as Durdle door this is a limestone arch. Please refer this link for any additional information on this location.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durdle_Door

Wordless Wednesday - 6

Do you know him?

Sir James Young Simpson - Guess who is that?  He's a Scottish doctor - the person behind the  discovery of anesthetic properties of chloroform and introduced it for general medical use.  This is his statue at Princes Street Gardens, in Edinburgh.  

Song for today!

I totally appreciate that you've been reading these scheduled posts for the last few days.  On it's continuation, while I do have lots of topics to be written, I needed some time, and it can't happen on a scheduled post, especially when I was in such a hurry to type in 6 random scheduled posts.  So, I am just hitting simple ones. 

This is such a mesmerizing soothing song I've heard and it's repeated in my iphone every often.  Apologies for posting a regional song, but you will so be hooked to this song, if you hear it once. 

The movie is called Madrasapattinam.  I will let you read through wiki for the movie..Both the movie and songs were too good.  Being a chenniitte myself, I couldn't stop relishing this movie which was set during the 1947's Madras.  

If you like melody, romance with a classical touch, go for this!  It will soon be your favourite too :)

Spinach Pakora

With less preparation time, it's a simple snack to munch on along with your piping hot tea on a chilly day.  

Ingredients:

Gram Flour/Chickpea flour - 1.5 cup
Spinach (nicely chopped) - 2 cup

Rice flour - 2 tsp
Red chilli powder -  a pinch
Green Chillies - 1 (finely chopped)
Ginger garlic paste - 1/2 tsp
Salt - 1/2 tsp 

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Procedure:
1.  Mix all the ingredients together with little bit of water.  The batter you make should not be watery, but stiff and thick. 
2. Heat up oil in a deep frying pan.  Once it's heated up, take a little amount of batter and make fritters. 
3.  Let the fritters deep fry.  Once you see them turn brownish, them them off the pan.
4.  enjoy the hot spinach pakora with a sip of chai and get immersed in your favourite book.  
Note:  You can also add onion or a few mint leaves into the batter to add different taste and flavor.  

Molecular Man

These are the 30 metres tall molecular man structures built by an American artist Jonathan Borofsky.  This picture above is captured in Berlin, Germany.  There's also another similar structure in Iowa state, USA.   The sculpture has 3 humans leaning towards each other, with their body having numerous holes which represents molecules.  

Mr.Borofsky explains them -"the molecules of all human being coming together to create our existence".   

Click here to see how  they were constructing this structure.  

This structure sit on the River Spree, in Berlin.  It's a nice place particularly during the sunrise or sunset, when you can take lovely pictures of these molecular man. 

Jonathan has worked on many creative sculptures of human beings which are displayed in various cities in the world.  His creations look amazing and awe inspiring.  If you are interested, visit them at http://www.borofsky.com/

Hair dare and a short vacation...

I never had any hairdresser, coz I hardly needed them!  I never dared to go for any hair styling.

A story of a swan

There's a nice lake some time back I visited, and there's so much of swans,ducks and birds around.  That's when I started to admire a swan and just looked at it for about 20 minutes. And that's when I was animated by the way it turn its rubber-type neck! Heck!  Animal watching is so much fun...

posing !

And then she turned away from me!

  

  

And this is the best pose !

Wordless Wednesday - 5

Yeh Dil Maange More!

Yeh Dil Mange more..not the gifts, but love! Not just me, every soul on earth do yearn for love, a cuddle, a smile, little conversation, some attention, a lifetime camaraderie!

IS there anything beautiful/satisfying than sharing the love with the one who loves you so much? If you do think sharing love is THE MOST beautiful thing, then why do we have to wait for a year till this valentine's day to do that? Do we see auspicious time for sharing love?

Many of them (read media) have adulterated the meaning of Love and Valentine's Day. It's not just the day meant for 2 people (a couple who's in love or married). There can't be any discrimination made on this. It's a right to love and to be loved! It's for every single living thing - from animals to birds or insects, to people who live in the streets, to people who work hard to earn the bread, to the one who's been neglected in life, to the one's who've been asked to stay in old age home..I could just go on adding so many! But the point is to share and give love! So give them all the love generously, endlessly!

The world should never be in deficit of love! If that happens, that's the end of world! Long live love!!!

Happy Valentine's Day to you all!!

A walk to remember!

Dear S, 
I promise to you
when we grow old and
reminisce about our days of togetherness
the journey we take through 
our memory lane will be 
the best walk to remember!   

Much love,
A

L-O-V-E

Love...in simple...makes life worthwhile!  

Portrait speaks

Another (boring) Saturday browsing through hard-disk photos!  I would soon be able to publish a future international best seller titled "100 things to do when husbands work on a weekend". I'm the queen of sarcasm today!

Photography Gyan # 6 (Long Exposure)

I know this is the 100th time I am saying this, but can't stop myself without any inkling!  If you are using a slow shutter speed you definitely need to use a tripod. And the previous gyan's last picture is taken with slow shutter speed (1 sec).
Learning slow shutter speed (long exposure) is so much fun.  And learning them with not-so-great photos is even more fun.  To me, learning is at its best - only when we learn from our mistakes and not from what makes us proud.
Do you know how to make jelabi, sev etc. Why am I jumping from photography to food topic?  Confused??  See the below pictures.
Here's the Jelabi!  (Shutter speed used is 4 secs)

Here's some Sev! (1/2 sec)

And some Thenkuzhal (2 sec exposure)

 

How relishing are they!  I'm talking about these photos.  I don't know how many budding photographers have liked slow shutter speed Light trials and experimentation, but I simply loved them.  Isn't it so much fun to make all kinds of Indian snacks and sweets using your camera?

These are some of the myriad scrap photos that I had.  They are definitely not the best ones, but they are mine - still precious to me.  So I am using them here to explain slow shutter speed.
Setting low shutter speed means increasing the time.  Refer here.

If you are using point and shoot (Henceforth called as P&S), set the camera to night shot mode. It will automatically chooses a slow shutter speed depending on the light conditions.  When you press the shutter button, move around the camera in any desired direction and make your own Jelabi, jangri,thenkuzhal and murukku!

If you are using a SLR, set to S mode, increase the shutter speed to 4 or more sec and rotate, tilt or zigzag your camera, and you can see these light trials (perfect lines that are formed due to long exposure).

These can be done handheld.  But if you want these light trials to be perfectly lined, you need tripod.  Take a look at this picture here.  It's taken with 8 sec exposure.  Aren't these traffic light trials awesome.  I haven't tried my hands on them yet, because I don't get to travel a lot in the night time with a tripod.
A long exposure will increase the clarity of the picture if it is positioned in tripod.

Some examples of how a picture looks if they are handheld with long exposure.   This one's taken with just 1 sec exposure.  Keeping your camera standstill for 1 sec is very difficult - try it out and you will realize yourself!

And this one's taken with 1/2 sec exposure.  Taken during diwali in our very own Chennai. 

And this one below is even less - 1/3 sec. 

You now realize the importance of tripod?  

Now it totally puts me in shame to even publish above shown pictures in my so-called-beautiful-blog that has some nice pictures.  Even worse are to watermark them with my name! As if there are 1000s of people to steal and misuse these pictures!
Below is one of that million dollar picture I have (badly framed though), taken with a proper tripod stand and set at 8 sec exposure.  This is the image of Sri Parthasarathy temple Gopuram, as seen from my in-laws' terrace. 

So it's time for you to try out your favorite snack or sweet in your camera!

PS: I've just past 10th Feb by 26 minutes. I spent around 2 hours researching my archives to pick right pictures and realised just now that I'am already on 11th Feb. So I'm taking the liberty of post dating the post to 11.45pm on 10th Feb. 

Thursday Challenge - RED

After a thoughtful consideration of whether to write a proper post or not, sleep preceded over writing!  So keeping it simple to Thursday Challenge!  

Anything in RED is this weeks prompt.  

This is a decoration  light I spotted in one of the Christmas markets.  

Wordless Wednesday - 4

Ten on Tuesday - 8

Here's the random 10 things that I did when the husband was working over the weekend glued to the computer at home!  Which means I still have no free time, but to cook and serve him, let alone feed him!  And the weather outside was pretty cold, so did not divulge myself to go out for any photo shoot.
I was so bored, and tried to do 100 other things to keep myself occupied!  How crazy that could get? Presenting a few of the stupidest things that I did over the last weekend.

Add Calories!

Calorie is a word people does not want to hear these days!  They think it as a monster.  I've heard a few girls saying "Oh that's hell a lotta calories.  I don't want them".  Calories are not monsters or demons!

When the husband works on weekend...

How does it feel?  It bores me to death staring at the walls!
This weekend was more of that kind - both the days!  I tried reading the book, but could not concentrate.  I did my normal house chores, spoke with my parents on skype, attempted to watch tele.  But I actually did nothing wholeheartedly.
Listened to some songs online and engaged myself during the solitude. I thought of sharing this particular song that features Nicole Scherzinger.

I like Nicole - her voice, bronze colored skin and her height that looks awfully beautiful onscreen.  This song (below) did not hit the charts really well (to be honest, none of her single charts had a great hit).  But I liked this song, can I say particularly for the cinematography! It's a visually astounding album, where Nicole (who looks gorgeous in this song) wanders around picturesque location.  I'll let you enjoy the song!

Isle of Arran - Part 3

It wouldn't be fair to leave the travelogue incomplete.  So, I will conclude this long procrastinated travelstory here.  You might want to read through Isle of Arran - Part 1 and Part 2 here. 

Photography Gyan # 5 (Shutter Speed during Night)

There's a famous saying "The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it"(quote by Benjamin Disraeli). So I started writing about photography to share my experiences and learning, and partially(read secretly) to improve my own knowledge as well!

Thursday Challenge - ONE

This week's Thursday Challenge is One (one of anything, unique, standing out, special...).  Thought this would fit the prompt really well.   

I confess that I had no time to write a post.  By now, you'd have realised how badly I'm camouflaging to post at least 1 post everyday.  Honestly, after writing posts for close a month on everyday, I feel totally tired!  But I don't want to discontinue this Project 366.  So, somedays, to just keep the momentum going, I will fill the space with Wordless wednesdays and Thursday challenges!  Now my blog totally looks like a photoblog for which I already feel a bit flustered, that I so desperately wanted to write a non-photo post or a non-photography-oriented post.  God knows when that will happen.  Till I see you tomorrow with another post, have a good day or good night - wherever you are!

Wordless Wednesday - 3