Last Sunrise of 2009

Today brings to close another eventful year...... of successes and failures.... of new friends being made and old friends moving away....
Watching the sunrise today, the last of this decade brings back lots of memories, of photoshoots, exhibitions, travel and special people who made this year wonderful......
This is a way of me saying thank you, to all the wonderful people who made this year so beautiful and made me enjoy one glorious sunrise after another .......

National Orchid Garden - 3

Pleasure

Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,

But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.

For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,

And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,

And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy

…..

The Prophet – Khalil Gibran

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National Orchid Garden - 2

cont…..

On entering the garden, we saw some common types of orchids, and the thoughts running through my mind were like, why the hell did we pay S$ 5, for entry to see stuff that is everyday….. and then, the magic started, there were orchids of such colours and hues, that it was mind blowing….

we saw…. orchids in various shades of yellow….

     some with spots ,

 

some in bunches,

and some single

and a few more in various mixes….

to be continued with other colours…..

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National Orchid Garden - 1

A rainy morning in Singapore, saw Sandeep Padhye, author of a popular blog on living at Singapore (http://www.icare2share.com) and me venturing out to the National Orchid garden  at the Singapore Botanical Gardens.

 

Having heard a lot about orchids at Singapore (it is the national flower of Singapore), I wanted to see how different the orchids at Singapore, would be, from the ones back home at India.

Entering the gardens I was lamenting on the lack of sunlight, as after attending the photosensitive workshop and meeting Joginder Singh(http://www.jogisingh.com) and Shailan (http://www.shailanparker.com/), I rarely take photos unless I have nice light (Jogi and Shailan will kill me for this ).

And this morning was grey and dull (as can be seen from this photograph of the Harbour) and I despaired getting any good photographs, but since I love orchids, I did not want to leave Singapore without visiting the garden, having decided that I’ll just put the camera in the bag, and only take back memories.

 

On entering the gardens, we saw, to our delight and surprise that the sun was playing hide-and-seek with the clouds, and there were moments when we had lovely sunshine, and were able to take some nice photos. Since i clicked away like mad (as usual), I’d be posting the pics as a series, instead as all at one go, so please bear with me …….

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Dance of Death

A beautiful, warm, summers morning saw me strolling along the Avon river in Christchurch, when I spied two gulls fighting with each other over some food .

 

Fights between birds are common. The Cathedral square has a whole bunch of birds fighting with each other over scraps of food left by the tourists, but this was with an intensity that I had never witnessed before. One of the gulls had the neck of the other in its beak and was hell bent on killing the other one.

 

At least that was how it looked to me.

 

Even after the second gull tried to retreat the first ‘bully’ followed the second one and kept attacking it until one of the staff of the garden intervened and chased the bully away……

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Birds of Paradise

A hot and overcast day, saw me zipping along Singapore roads, on my way to Jurong Bird Park. The park is a veritable paradise for bird lovers. Starting with the penguin enclosure, where penguins are kept in a cold, glass enclosure.......





to the more open ones were the birds are free to roam ....


one gets to see Flamingoes,

Painted Storks and other water birds......


And then we come to another enclosure called the African Waterfall Aviary, that is a covered enclosure, but one does not realise it inside, as the roof is very high and the place is massive, being dominated at one end by a massive waterfall......

The only bird I could readily discern from India was the Braminy Kite, in the Birds of Prey enclosure

and then there is the Parrot enclosure, where parrots that look like they have been painted by a mad painter fly around

One of the biggest attractions of the park is the Lory loft, where colourful Lory can be fed by the visitors..., and the staff are really helpful and lovely.....

the lory loft is made of several levels and has lovely stairs & bridges linking the various levels....

 

the other birds in the park include the Crowned Pigeon,

and birds like the ibis.

The park is too extensive for any photographer to cover in a day, as there is so much to cover. I will return there soon and get some more pics of the birds I missed.

Wind beneath my wings......

...............

Fly, fly, fly high against the sky,

wind beneath my wings.....

so high I almost touch the sky.

Thank you, thank you,

thank God for you, the wind beneath my wings

- Bette Midler

On a Saturday morning , as I left Delhi for a holiday this was how it felt.... it was like soaring into the clear blue skies, without a care in the world.

But as beautiful as the blue sky looked, it looked a bit bland without the architecture of the cloud-scape's, and my wishes were granted when the first few wisps appeared in the sky. It was like the beginning of Beethoven's  Symphony, which culmunated in a thunderstorm by the time we reached Bangalore.

Tomb of Abdul Rahim Khan-e-Khana

On Mathura Road, on the way to Nizamuddin Railway Station is the Tomb of Abdul Rahim Khan-e-Khana, (1556-1627) an Indian Sufi poet popularly known as Rahim. He was a poet at the court of Mughal emperor Akbar and the son of Bairam Khan, a great Turkish statesman, warrior and caretaker of Mughal emperor Akbar.

Abdul Rahim Khan-e-Khana was among one of the nine Navratna's of Akbar's court. He loved Indian civilization and was also an accomplished poet and an astrologer. Although he was of Iranian origin, and a Muslim, he was a great devotee of Lord Krishna. As he belonged to the Bhakti period, he wrote couplets in Hindi in praise of Lord Krishna. He also had an exceptional command over Sanskrit language.

Among other accomplishments, he  wrote two works on the subject of Astrology- Khet Kautukam and Dwawishd Yogavali, which are still referred by people interested in Astrology and also translated 'The Memoirs of Babar' from Turkish to Persian.

Lodhi Garden

Lodhi Garden; the minute one hears that a photographic shoot is scheduled here, a collective groan goes up, because for a photographer at Delhi, Lodhi Garden is a place where one has 'been there, done that'. One does not realise that sometimes visiting a place is more to meet friends and to hone your skills rather than find new stuff......

Well that is what one thinks, but then once you are there, you realise that, hey, there are new things to shoot and new stuff to capture.

 From flowers, to rainbows, the gardens are a veritable paradise.

My very first shoot at the gardens yielded me stuff, that was lovely. Later shoots were not as enthusiastic and that was reflected in the kind of photographs one took.

Then came along Photosensitive, where Shailan and Jogi make it clear that they are not looking for anything other than the best, so then the exploration started....

With new angles, and new ideas, sometimes when one is seeking, even the God's do lend a hand and offer you

awesome sunsets,

swirling clouds

and of course, a rainbow :-)

....... add this to friends willingly posing for you, as Pratibha and Rita did during the photowalk, and Lodhi Garden comes alive with the sound of clicks.