Temporary Darkness...

i stare at it,
at the darkness that surrounds me,
temporarily cutting away all light i know...
i stare long, long enough till i realize
the wonderful magic i'd been missing all along,
the more i looked,
the more forms i could identify,
forms ready to cast a spell on my soul,
yearning for more,
aspiring me to reach for my goal,
and not be shown down by the sorrow .



When in such darkness,
i find the truth,
I know for sure,
that the brightness will prevail..
and Success for sure I will avail..
and no longer do i fear to dream of reaching the faraway suns..
and no longer i care,
as i embark on a journey to find Happy Horizons.

Selective coloring

How i wish we could all do it... Selective coloring.
Remove the colors of sorrow in life and fill it only with those colors that give us joy and unending
happiness.
I do remember while interacting with a senior person that Life itself is a Photoshop document. You keep making the actions and the canvas is filled with the events. The only difference is that in Life you do not have the option of Undo (CTRL+Z).


One would argue what are the colors that one can associate happiness with?
Whats a color of happiness in one culture may not be in another. As a designer do we need to be sensitive to such things? Many people say that India is a land of color ! and that its a photographer's paradise. But still we associate the black and white medium to sadness and mourning...
The conception generally is that Joy is present only when there is color. This may be true in most of the cases not all though!



Doing this Selective coloring is really simple.
1) Open the image on Photoshop. This is the 'Background Layer' in the opened document.
2) Copy the image layer onto another layer (this is the "Background Copy layer") so that both the layers are coinciding, and the images are just one below the other.
3) Convert this copy layer into Black and white. Using Image> Adjustment > Gradient Map. ( make sure that the image pallete in the menu toolbar has the colors Black in foreground and White in background.
4) Select the eraser tool and erase those parts of the image which you want in color from the Copied layer. Since the image on the lower layer still has the colored image, the desired effect is easily attained.




I just truly wish that i could do this with Life also!
Enjoy!

Light Painting Workshop

Recently I had conducted a photography workshop titled "Light painting Workshop" for the fellow employees in my department in the company.
The response was good and we had around 20 enthusiastic people participating.
April 6th 2007 3-4 PM.



What is Light Painting?
Light painting is a technique in which light sources are projected or "painted" in selective areas during the camera exposure. All work is done in camera, no computer manipulation occurs. Exposures can range from 20 seconds upwards to an entire evening to achieve.
Light painting opens up a world of possibilities that are not available in the world of near-instant exposure. For example, for infinite depth of field, simply keep refocusing the camera as you light parts of the subject that are at different distances from the lens. To make just a portion of the subject diffuse, put a stocking over the lens while you're painting that part.

The interesting part was that many of the folks had not handled a SLR camera ever. So the workshop also involved giving insights into the way the Bulb mode in the camera functions.



The whole team was divided into two and each team had one Torch, a colored cellophene paper as their props. Each teams were provided a Digital SLR set on a tripod. The idea was to unleash the creativity and also put on the thinking caps and come up with interesting themes for the paintings.



The themes were pretty interesting with people doing the Matrix, Bharatnatyam Dance, the Symbol Om, other body postures etc. Here are some of the shots that were taken from the participants of the workshop.

Know your Soul..

I have always read that of the three things that a human being is composed of; namely the body, mind and the soul, and it is the Soul that should be pleased the most. Only then can the other two remain happy. If the soul is happy, the others are bound to be happy. It is perhaps the reason why the happiness in children are most explained. Having the freedom to do what they please and also do things they like.
"Know your soul" is what the gurus keep saying. So thats what I have been trying to do in the past few days... knowing myself better... and it has been helping me in taking decisions.

So this is what i did... one day.. or rather one night!

I had this strong urge of going for a long drive on my bike... convinced my roommate to accompany me and then we were speeding on the National Highway # 7 that connects Bangalore to Chennai in a short while.
The initial plan was to drive, take a few shots of the sunset and be back in an hour's time.
The weather was nice.. and the breeze blowing on my face on the speeding bike just added to the pleasure.
Though could not capture the sunrise, owing to the clouds that played spoilsport, we decided to extend our drive and what a good decision that was!
Decided to hit Hosur, have a cup of coffee and come back.

Once we reached Hosur, we decided to roam the bylanes of the city and get a feel and smell of a small city. In the yonder we spotted a hill atop which was a temple while doing so. And at that moment the only thought that came to our mind simultaneously was to go there!

The Chandrachoodeshwar temple climb was steep and glad that we had a bike to take us there!
And man.. what a sight from that hill!
The city below just beginning to rest for the night...only to wake up to another busy day the next..

And with the number of lights that one could spot.. the skies felt lonely. It appeared that the world had turned upside down and I was seeing stars on the ground rather than the sky!

It's very rare that I don't carry my camera along to the places i visit. Thus there too i had to take some shots of the breathtaking views below.
So i tried some long exposure shots.
Some may wonder how i did this without a tripod... the rocks and the trees served as a perfect tripod to me and i made the full use of it!

Hosur City in the Yonder at Night


The entrance to the Chandrachoodeshwar Temple, outskirts of Hosur.


Hosur at Night


Light streaks across the road


Hoping to make more such trips in the near future!