The Road Ahead

Another year rolls by, and we strive to make resolutions which we try to stick to throughout the year. Well, this year, I'm going to try soemthing different. I'm not going to make resolutions. I'm going to fly by the seat of my pants - something I don't usually do, but would love to do more of. So, here's to NOT making resolutions - Happy New Year everybody!

This was taken in driving through the lake district in Scotland - sceneries like this are pretty common driving through there. I thought this was a fitting picture to start the new year, as the name suggests. Hope good things are in store for everybody!

It was nice to see that my blog was one of the finalists for the best new photoblog and the best American photoblog over at photoblogawards.com - thank you to everyone who voted! Congrats to also Francesco and Ilan for making that list.

Ephemeral

I've never seen a castle - a lot of people might say that even after seeing Duffus Castle, I still haven't seen a real one, but this was the first castle we just happened upon while trying to find a totally different place - which we never found. This place, although a tourist spot was totally deserted in favor of the more complete castles in other places around the area, which was fine by me, because it gave me a chance to get a sense of the place without a mob of people. As you can see, most of it is in shambles, and very few walls are still erect. I suspect that within a few more years, the rest of the walls will come down. Makes me think about everything we build, and how attached we get to it and how temporary they all really are.... I'm off for rest of the year, and so this will effectively be the last post of the year. For everybody that is still reading this, and have been with me till the end of the year, I wish you a very Happy New Year! See you in 2010!!

Weathered

Most people that know me know that I have a fascination with benches. There are many reasons for this, but the main reason being the bench is a constant relative to time; it's like a living-breathing entity, like a watchdog, that provides a seat for anybody that passes by, and is a silent witness to everything that surrounds it. I like to imagine what it has seen, what it has experienced, and the people who used it and the circumstances that led them to this bench.

The location of the bench often reveals how much it has seen. This bench is located on the extreme north coast of Scotland, in Buckie. It's like a sleepy New England town, with a pretty low population, and this seashore is mostly a tourist town, so when we visited in October, there was almost nobody there. But as you can see, the walls and the bench have both taken a beating from mother nature, and endured quite a bit of non-human contact. I decided to ignore the 2/3rd rule for this one, because I thought the starkness of the surrounding of this bench was important, and I wanted to show the bench in its very lonely state.... hope it worked :-/

Expressions

Sometimes, expressions are just priceless. I can't really do justice to the expression on this little girls face when she saw this horse, whose head is bigger than her. Her face turned into a crumpled white sheet... and then she started crying....

For all the visitors that come to my blog everyday, I thank you. I started this blog about a year ago, and its been about a year of posts, and the whole excercise has been wonderful. I've met so many new interesting photographers and people and found so many great portfolios - just that alone was worth it. Recently I've been working on some other projects, so haven't been that diligent in posting. I appreciate your comments and thoughts, hope you will continue to visit for many years more, in spite of my laziness :)....

The Butcher's Shop

Recession hit everywhere this year, and many shops went out of business. Among the usual shops to go are the specialty shops; but there is more to the above shop. Not only is it a speciality shop, it'a also a shop of the past. I remember as a kid I used to go grocery shopping with my dad, who would go from shop to shop, buying the one thing from each shop, as each shop only sold one or two things that they specialized in. As we get more and more advanced technologically and industrially, people have less time. They would rather buy everything at the one-stop mart and get everything together at one go. Gone are the days where you go from shop to shop. Farm stands, dairy/cheese shop are almost non-existent, and the butcher's shop is just another casualty. People would rather pick up the packaged meat at the frozen section along with the milk and other vegetables than go to the neighborhood butcher, take the time to pick out a choice cut and have the butcher cut it up or package it up for them...there is something less mechanical and more human about the latter experience, which we are leaving behind as time goes by - sometimes I'm not sure if this is advancement.

On another note, I was featured in the Escape Into Life webzine :) It's an art magazine, and they feature work in many other art medias. I am flattered to be a part of that group.

No Entry

Today was not my day.

Started with waking up late, being late to the doctors office, finding that appointments WERE really needed, getting into an accident with a deaf lady, who decided that she didn't want to stay, chasing her for a few miles to catch up, getting a stinky rental car, going to the gym to find that its closed, and ending with my food being missing on the delivery order. I'm waiting for the clock to reach midnight.

My friend Ilan had once mentioned that he didn't care much for landscapes, because they can get cliched and boring - I can see how that could be - in fact, while I was taking the picture above in Sheffield, England, somebody asked (in a mocking tone) exactly what I found about landscapes interesting. I thought about it and I realized that personally for me, I just like being part of beautiful landscapes. Being there is enough, to be able to capture it no matter how many have done it before me, is an enjoyable experience. Bringing the image home completes that experience.

It got me thinking about media genres in general. It seems certain genres in photography (and movies, etc) tend to gain more attention than others. These genres are more on the serious side, showing problems and areas where we have work to do. Its probably why comedies have never won Oscars, and photographs about impoverished third world countries seem to win all the awards. I understand it to some extent; my personal favourite genre of photography is documentary photography, and ideally, I would like to use it to make people aware of things they should be aware of. Unfortunately, these things don't include comedies (in movies) and landscapes (in photography). Another one of my personal photography related philosphy is that photography should evoke emotions. So, then does that emotion always need to be the one of drama? Why is it that we are not equally moved by a funny picture as opposed to a serious one? Drama vs comedy - do they evoke equally extreme emotions? If so, why do media with only dramatic subjects win all the accolades? What do you think?