Posts tagged ‘photos’

January 8, 2011

OutStanding – Wishing a very Happy 2011 Ahead

2010 had been a great year. Just that it flew fast, real fast ! Wishing a very happy and a prosperous 2011 to all my readers. And to me – hoping that I would keep pace with 2011 as much as I am wanting to. Though I had been blogging on and off for quiet some time now, I had not shared as much as I wanted to (oh no, not the rare ramblings, but atleast some inspiring photographs ! ).

This 2011 am planning to share atleast one photo every week this year [and yeah u can keep a tab on me :) ]

This week shot is from the numerous sunflower fields en’route Hampi to Bangalore. Hampi by itself is so majestic, that these travel experience are noting but an additional bonus!

It is not who you are that makes you stand out. It is what you do, with what happens to you , that makes the difference !!!

Buy Print Flickr Page

Sunflower Fields
Enroute Hampi, Karnataka, India

September 19, 2010

Temple guarded by Lions @ Kanchipuram

Kanchipuram (???????????) is rightly called the “City of 1000 temples”. Though we might not find 1000s of temples currently, there are atleast few hundreds. And a handful of them still active with rituals and pujas being performed on a daily basis. The below is from Kailashnath Temple. Accounting to Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations at home (yeah yeah my laziness too added to the delay :))  ended up at this place just after noon- after an hour and half drive from Chennai. Though the sun was harsh, the shot came out really good as I was able to sneak and set the tripod in the extreme corner for an HDR shot.

Buy Print Flickr Page Kailashnath Temple, Kanchipuram
Chennai, India
April 25, 2010

You just can’t Fence Nature !

Horsley Hills, Sunrise
Horsley Hills
Karnataka, India

Horsley Hills – a unexplored hill station – is around 160 kms from Bangalore. This kind of was a good place for a weekend outing. The guest house was really neat, cost effective and you can generally get custom food made, if you get the required things (chicken etc) and provide sufficient time !

The sunset point was really good and easily accessible – thought we actually missed the sunset due to timing. This also had a lot of potential for star gazing and star trail photography – the point being walkable from the guest house [do remember to carry a torch].

There is no specific sun rise view point, but you could go up for a small hike adjacent to the holiday inn (or something named similar, close to the Governors’ Bungalow, if you are an early bird !!!

April 18, 2010

Painted Hills


Painted Hills, John Day Fossil Beds
Eastern Oregon, USA

What is it made of

Layers of hard claystones which include ancient soils (palesols) and lake beds. Recently the surface of the hills had weathered into softer clay. The claystones were formed by several geographic events in the past 33 million yrs. the volcanic activity of cascade mountains (some 100 miles west) deposited layers of cooled ash. The atmosphere with the help of the plants and animals oxidized the ash. Ground water feed’ed the varied minerals. And in due course today’s claybeds were formed (wow what an amount of structural and chemical changes would have happened !!!!)

 

Colors of the Painted Hills

Aluminum, Silicon, Iron, Magnesium, Manganese, Sodium, Calcium, Phosphorus, Titanium, Potassium, Oxygen, Hydrogen – All this above and some additional elements by a very special secret recipe forms the beautiful colors of this wonderful scenery. Depending on the amount of moisture and the light available , the shades keeps varying thru the day and all seasons.

 

How come there is not much of flora on the hill

Its a interesting to note that there is not much of flora on the painted hills. And the reason is more interesting  – The clay on the painted hills has a great ability to absorb water and swell. And most of the plant are not able to compete with the soil for water. And the once that do, u can see them in the crevices and gullies of the red hills (the yellow ones that blossoms during the spring are chaenactis and bee-plant.

For the Flowers view of the mountain check this out !!!

March 7, 2010

Lovely Sunset over Bangalore, India


Sunset
Bangalore, India

Lovely sunset with warm vibrant fading in the horizon and kind of leaving Inner Light to the skys above.
This is one of my favorite sunset shots due to various reasons

This was a shot from my new apartment @ Bangalore, India ! It is amazing what u can see when u take some time to look around. Generally we travel all over to get to see sights like this … atleast I do !!!

Also this was a first shot from my new Wide Angle (10-22mm !!!) It has got amazing clarity. Need to try a full size to see the details on the construction , the playground etc. Probably need to get some vijayanagar architecture shots to better leverage the wide angle.

November 22, 2009

Mahabalipuram – Arjuna’s Penance


Arjuna’s Penance

Mahabalipuram, India

Arjuna’s Penance, as locally known as , is located in Mamallapuram or Mahaballipuram [???????????](60 kms from Chennai enroute to Pondicherry). It is believed to be from 7th century, measuring 96 feet long by 43 feet high.

Arjuna’s Penance, perhaps the world’s largest bas-relief, is the universe itself in stone, throbbing with a vastness of conception. Legend has it something close the tale of Noah, but differs in its cast of characters. It goes like that, King Bhagirath brought down the Ganges from Heaven to purify the souls of his ancestors. His plan went awry when he realized that the flood would inundate the earth, so he had to undergo a penance to convince Shiva to intervene, who came down to earth and let the flood trickle through his hair, dispersing the waters safely in innumerable streams all over the world.

 


Arjuna’s Penance
Mahabalipuram, India

Arjuna’s Penance has the magically sculpted scene, which opens the doors of cosmic imagination, it has over 100 figures of gods and celestial creatures, birds and beasts, man and saint.

Mamallapuram is 60 kms from Chennai and connected by a good road that runs along the coast. It a good one day trip, or probably a weekend drive if clubbed with Pondicherry from Chennai.

August 5, 2008

American Southwest – Monument Valley


Three Mittens, Monument Valley Navajo Park
UT , USA

 

Monument Valley is not really a valley, but an upwarp of sedimentary rock that is at least 260 million years old, surrounded by sentinels that have yet to fully erode. The floor itself is more than a mile high, part of the 130,000 square-mile Colorado Plateau. Sandstone is easily eroded, and the wind, rain, cycles of frost and heat have been at work, cracking and chiseling the valley to its present form.

September 29, 2007

Ancient Drawing Board

Lower Calf Creek Trail
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
Utah, USA

It was an amazing experience just walking between mineral-streaked cliffs of Navajo Sandstone, beaver ponds and pre-historic rock art sites en route to the 126-foot-high Lower Calf Creek Falls. The total roundtrip distance to the falls is 5-1/2 miles. Though the summer sun was above and my (a little over a year old) son was on the backpack, the hike was pretty enjoyable with very little elevation change. Most of the trail is sandy & that slows the pace, at times !

The most interesting part of the hike were the wall paintings and the Indian granaries (zoom in & zoom out) and of course the jewel of the crown being the lower falls itself.

On an entirely different perspective, we travel so far, hike so long to get a peek into the lives of the Anasazi Indians. These petroglyph on the walls of the canyons does provide the glimpse. But you know what, in most of these trails you see a notice that there are messages that indicate a heavy penalty if you make new makings (or painting) on these canyon walls (of course !!!)

We do have the technology to make new painting on these walls, that could last more the existing ones. If we are not allowed to make new paintings today how would people, 800 – 1000 years from get a glimpse onto ours lives …… right :-)

Wrong !!! As technology grows, live changes and so is the medium. Who knows even the blog(s) like these -yeah the same one u r reading now ;-) could serve the purpose of providing the window to our lives, in future. Time’s Person of the year , 2006 clearly indicated the significance of the user generated content (if you already don’t know Times Person of the year 2006 is YOU) .

The count of blogs, as of writing this post, just on WordPress.com alone is 1,562,804 blogs with 53,197 new posts today. Even after dropping off the test blogs and the inactive ones, it is still quiet a number – the point is there is a good amount of user content getting generated every day on the Internet.

What would happen to these valuable user generated content, once the user is no more ?Even if someone decides to manage and maintain a users content after user’s time, On what basis would the user account details be shared with the family or friends ? May be the blog or the site could be graciously closed, but what if the users demise is not expected ? Would these become asserts of the individuate and hence be part of his Will ? How would we differentiate between the valuable and junk out of these content ?

So many things to ponder about ….

August 29, 2007

The Earth is Cooking


Yellowstone National Park, WY, USA

This national park sits on 2000° lake of molten lava, an underground pressure cooker of 50 miles long and 30 miles wide. For atleast a few million years, since magma burned a hole under ancient Wyoming’s bedrock, yellow stone periodically disgorged a small ocean of lava in eruptions hundreds of times worse than any volcanic eruptions on earth.

Today, the volcanic action, heats the rocks below the surface, and this in turn creates all manner of spectacle in thousands of steaming hot springs and hundreds of geysers, plus bubbling mud-pots and fumaroles.

At Yellowstone, the earth is cooking - Life, Times Inc

August 5, 2007

Temple Square


Temple Square, Salt Lake City, UT

Temple Square – An amazingly different place , an entirely new world within the downtown of Salt Lake City, UT. One a beautiful evening with a wonderful sunset – Lush gardens, serene pond, water fountains, iron cast statues – the list goes on …

For other shots of the Temple square, check this out (slide show).

I need to plan on a couple of visits, there is so much more around here.

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