Finally

I've been trying to click a photograph of these two birds for quite some time now but never managed to. I was really happy to get it finally and that too both on the same day. The first is a Hoopoe and the second the Indian Roller or Neelkanth.

Young leaves and the setting sun

Back to Black and White

Many shades of green

Backyard Wildlife

Dance of the Peacock

Pretty Flutterbies

Garden Chronicles

My mother keeps a small vegetable garden in the three balconies of our house. Its mostly like a playground where she experiments and plays around with soil, compost and green growing things. There hasnt been much produce but we have all been able to enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of her labours...

Yellow capsicum from a plant that grew by chance from the seeds in the compost.

Tomatoes have a been a constant from the beginning, we have always had tomato plants growing in our little garden.

An abundance of mint. There, whenever we want pudina chutney or minty lemonade.

This one was quite tasty but it was also small, it didn't grow much bigger. I love the colour, its so pretty!

Many plants came and went, and many more continue to come and go as the garden keeps evolving and my mother keeps experimenting. I think it is a really nice thing when you are able to include in your food, veggies that you have grown yourself and got fresh from the plant just before cooking.

Roses

Bokeh Dance

Bokeh is defined as 'the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, present in out-of-focus areas of a photograph'. 

I've always had a fascination for those soft circles of light in the background and the effect and mood they lend to a photo. 

I learnt that it is the aperture that helps determine what the bokeh will look like and chanced upon the right combination of camera settings for me while clicking these pictures of bamboo. I managed to get a crick in the neck as well, standing there with my head bent back for goodness knows how long. But I didn't mind, as I was happy with what I got for my trouble.

This one is a picture of the leaves of a bottlebrush tree.

White beauties

Buns and Bread

My mother loves baking and her specialty is bread. She experiments a lot with different ingredients and invents her own recipes. Her breads are never the same twice as she adds new and different ingredients each time and rarely remembers the amounts or measurements from last time. Nevertheless, they are each one so delicious, that they don't last very long. Sometimes they are devoured before I have the time to take a picture and sometimes, in the eagerness to eat them, I forget to take the picture! :)

Oven fresh raisin buns baked for breakfast.

Extremely healthy sourdough bread made with a special mix of different millet flours. :)

Project Purple

I read somewhere about ideas for photo projects and assignments one could take up to practice and hone their photography skills. I felt like trying one out and decided on " A color a week". You pick any random color and click photos of that color everyday for a week. It could be of anything, but as it is so restrictive, it makes you more observant of your surroundings (after all, it is not easy and you have to search everywhere for your chosen color), gets your creative juices flowing and you learn how to photograph mundane things in an interesting manner.

I chose purple and started walking around the house everyday for sometime looking for purple things. Sometimes I made great discoveries but many times there just wasn't anything interesting enough.


Day 1

I really like the way the writing fades away in this one.


Day 2

A string of beads that I made to decorate the living room curtains.


Day 3

 Umbrella!


Day 4

 

This is one of the worse ones. The day was almost over and I was out of ideas. Then I noticed that my toothbrush was purple. I clicked the same toothbrush again and again from different angles till I was fed up, trying to get a decent picture, but this was the best I could come up with. One thing I learnt from this is that it is really difficult to make your toothbrush look beautiful. :)














Day 5

Art supplies. I don't know if this is cheating or not, but I did it anyway. :)


Day 6

Only one day left! Its been fun, but for some reason I can't wait to get this project over with. This is a picture of our toy cupboard and I used selective color to make the purple one stand out, because otherwise it would be lost among the colors of the rest of the board games.


Day 7

Another selective color picture! I really like this effect. The fact that I do is also apparent from the number of pictures I have taken with it. :)

And so, we come to the end of this little journey. However, the end of this one is only the beginning of the next. I leave you now, but my head is bursting with crazy ideas and it won't be long before I'm back  with another silly project.

Until next time then! :)

Flower Fantasies

As I have already mentioned before, I seem to have a helpless fascination for flowers and can't stop clicking them. Here are some more photos as a result of this madness. :)