Sunday, December 16, 2007

Some interesting perspectives!










This weekend the weather here is very very bad. The warning of snow storm has been issued yesterday and here it is today, we are hit with the worst weather with gusty wind blowing with 40kmph and the temp feeling like -26 deg. Many of the flights (almost 85%) got canceled and one of my friends, Naveena was one of the many unlucky people whose travel got canceled for the day. I am back from airport just 30 min back and ...man! what a horrible weather outside. The visibility is less than 10 mtrs many times. It was an awesome and horrible experience for all of us going and coming back from airport.

Because of this unfriendly weather I was a bit sad that I couldn't go out to shoot. As I have lost many of the RAW files [including that of Parliament's] because of my foolishness or carelessness whatever you say, I was very much eager to make all those images once again. So had some plans to go out to make some images. But fate has kept somethings else for me in the box. I ended up in sitting/sleeping for the whole morning on Saturday and whole day on Sunday!
But Saturday morning as I got a unique opportunity to make some images of some interesting perspectives. Here they are... I will leave to you friends to fig out what it is that I have captured.

Note: Nothing in the image is artificial or man made. All the images are very less cropped. I cropped them a bit only for compositions.

Now the ground is left to you to fig out what are these...

Hope you will enjoy...


- Ash

Monday, December 10, 2007

Delight of the night!!





Last Friday I decided to shoot the Canadian Parliament in night when she has the full glory with lights on her. Starting from Dec 6th till Jan end this lighting will be their on her. This is one of the tourist attractions in winter. She was looking really pretty with the colors and different shapes of light.
Tried my level best to not to get shake. It was a nice test for the 3 of us!! 1. Myself - not to induce much shake (some shake is obvious,i m a human :)) 2. my monopod - which I found very sturdy while buying in store :) 3.the ISO of my camera - on which I dont have much hope (sorry Nikon - a hard truth about D80, noise is apparent after ISO 800). But at the end I got some decent images even with ISO 1000 with very minimal shake.
I wish I had my Gitzo with me...

Hope you will like this....

- Ash

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

A passion called "Photography"!





Oh boy! I can't stay away from it! Whatever may the temp be!

Yep, thats what exactly happened last weekend with me. We all decided to go to shoot the places around Parliament at the time when no people are around. And GOD! what a day we chose!! Two days back weather forecast highlighted that it will go to as low as - 15 and avg will be somewhere around -10. As I had photographed at around -14 last time I was not afraid of that :). But the fate had something else to play with us. That day morning it went to - 23 deg. But with beautiful Sunshine. The light was gorgeous and sitting in the bus I was tempted to rush out. As soon as the bus halted, when I stepped outside, the reality hit upon me! And that day became my shortest photography stretch till now. I could not stand for 20 continuous minutes. After spending some 15 min the toes and the nails started paining... we rushed into a nearest mall to have something like hot coffee. (Basically to get rid of the cold!! :))
Then again ventured into the cold with equipment. After three such attempts got few decent images. Thank GOD that even though I dont have a VR lens with me, the monopod didnot let any image to into vein because of the shake... (I was shivering yaar!)

Hope you will enjoy some of these abstracts and architectural images...

Tough time ahead for me here... :)

-Ash

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Finally...The winter is here...






At last...the wait is over.... The winter is here....

Tried some compositions and abstracts last weekend.

All these images are made at a temp of nearly -14 degree. YES minus fourteen degrees... :)

- Ash

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Some common birds that are found here...




These are some common birds that you will find here. I am yet to know about the name of the gulls that are present every where in this place. I have observed some three to four variants in them. Thinking of buying the book "Birds of North America". :)

Preparing for the winter...



Ah! You should be here to see what does -5 degrees mean!! And I am expected to see and experience -30 deg this winter!!

The period between the first snow and the end of fall is very boring and color less here. All the trees will shed their leaves in preparation for the winter in order to save energy. The paths which were decorated with numerous colors by mother nature in fall will become so naked and dull that you will start hating to go there. A very drastic change in such a small period. Everyone will be waiting for the winter... silently...

Note: The first image what you see here is taken from the same place where I have taken the image for my post "Life is so colorful", which I took during fall.

You can view that image here.

Experiment with light!


An effort to see and capture the beauty of the moving light sources...

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The evening mood...








I don't know why but the evenings agitate me much than the mornings. May be the colors, or may be the setting sun, or may be the feel of 'another day has passed' or it may be the rising moon! But for sure, I am emotionally attached to the evenings.... more than the mornings.
The colors that the sky wears once the sun is set is just amazing. That will last for a very short time but for me it gives lots emotions and thoughts before the darkness spreads over it.

For a photographer one who loves to capture the colors of nature, the evening gives tremendous opportunity. While making some of these images the temp was near zero and I realized it only when I started packing me equipment! :) Some of these moments will go down into my memories....

Hope u will enjoy this too...

- Ash

The Spirit of Halloween...




Here in Western countries the Halloween is a very strange festival that they celebrate. All men, women and children will be dressed in various scary costumes and horrify people!

Some info about this celebration can be found here

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Happy Deepavali...




Happy Deepavali to you all from my side........


Enjoy the festival of light....... happily and safely.....



============


- Ash

After a long time...here is a bird...









:)

I was fascinated about these gulls which are so common here right from the first day I landed. I was looking for a good opprtunity to make some good images of these elegant avians. Last wekend I got an opprtunity to make some images of this beauty. The light was goos but the temperature was freezing...but who cares!!

Nature is always stingy to a photographer! :) It seldom gives good opportunity to capture its beauty...

This time I tried my best to use that opportunity...


========





- Ash

Life is so colorful...

Life is so colorful and cheerful. But the irony is many times we fail to realise it. 'Life' has a huge potential, if explored properly!! That's my bet!
We often see people who crib on everything. Who are unhappy about their job, their salary, their status in the society, their disobeying children, their diobeying wife (!!), the car that they have owned and many times they are not happy about themselves!! It all looks so strange to me!! If there are few reasons to be unhappy, there are millions of other reasons still left to be happy and cheerful. Why are we not looking into them?
The life to me is all about exploring and analysing. There is so much in the whole world to learn, to explore and to be happy and cheerful. The downs do come in life, the tough time do come in our way but what makes life feel good is the ability of yours to stand above them.

Every man has the ability to do that. Its just the matter of exhibiting it...

All the best...

- Ash

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Dream...


I was always dreaming to make an image something like this....But never even thought in dreams also that I will be getting something close to that from my balcony itself!!
Yes, I made this image from the balcony of my home here in Ottawa. It was a fine evening with a slight drizzle and bright light as well!! One side it was completely cloudy where as on the other side it was fully sunny! Got this nice moment on that magical evening.

In the evening of life...


In this place I am observing the chenges in the mentality of the people of different ages. What caught my attention is the glimpses of loneliness on the faces of the people who are in the last leg of their life or who are in the evening of their life!

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Social structure of humans...


"Friendship"...a name for an amazing bonding...




We humans have so complex social structure and complex structure of emotional attachments that if any mathematician (may be John Nash, who was trying to develop mathematical function for the random movement of the pigeons on the field infront of his home!! What a man! ) tries to develop an equation for describing this structure, the equation will be of the order of 'n' where n may tend to infinity!! :)

Thinking of writing a small piece of my thinkings on this sometime in the future.


To chew something until then here is a link which throws some light on this aspect.

Loneliness... a bliss?!!




I feel that loneliness is also a bliss sometimes... :) [Not a pessimistic statement though!]
It gives you ample time to think about yourself...and in my case (may be some of yours also) this thinking process makes a lot of difference. It shapes our personality in a suble way, many times without our knowledge!

Wednesday, October 17, 2007



The day is bright...The wind is light...

Remembering all you friends there...

Missing you all.









To make beautiful compositions I am finding it as a challenge here. The reason being the abstraction of the subject from the surrounding is very tough. When you look through the viewfinder you will feel that the image which is going to come is not doing justice to what your eyes are viewing at that point of time! So I need to work hard to make good images.
..........................................................................................
Learning days ahead!


Hi,
Finally.... ten days after coming here I got some time to sit quitely and do something that I like very much....yes, posting the image! :)
I had promised many of you that I will create my photoblog to share my images. I was stuck with many problems all these days. My big worry was to find a converter plug for my camera battery charger as the Indian plugs are useless here. So I had to wait for the weekend to find it out and ahh! finally I got that. I processed three of my images which I made on the very next day I landed here.
Many of us went to Gatineau Park which is famous for its maple leaved forest which will be in its full colors in teh fall season. Gatineau is a very very vast place and what we covered is a very small part of it. But man! what a place!!! The colors that the mother Nature wears here is just a sheer treat for the eyes.
We went to Pink Lake which is a part of the Gatineau and to MacKenzie's King. So I am starting off from the images of the Pink Lake and its surroundings. I have many images to process.

Note for the critics: I hate this laptop which doesnot render true colors. So I absolutely dont know what has happened to the image after processing. Here on this laptop it looks ok. But I am not sure.