Macro photography - few samples

I have a wide angle lens 18-55mm and  macro photography is difficult with this lens. But I thought close up pictures can be taken with this lens . These are some trials. I need to try more and explore the range of my lens. 

Fort and chain - Pencil Sketch

On a boring Saturday, I drew this very very simple drawing and thanks to me for drawing. I wanted to draw it on a coarse paper but didnt have one, so added the effect of blurred paper. I could see my weak areas clearly. Well I hope my next try gets them implemented. 

Legs - A pencil sketch

Few days back, I had posted my childhood sketches. They were my 13 years old memories and was aspiring to start sketching again. So finally I gave my first attempt today. 

Gopalpur on Sea

Few pics of the gopalpur beach in Orissa, a popular destination for some relaxation.

Failure management

I want a know of a person, who has not faced any major failure in their life. I am sure, I will find none. But out of all the people, few take good failure management policies to overcome their problems and few just cant handle the failures and spoil their mind and health. But these failure management tips are not available in any text book and is the most talked topic since ages.It is really hard to have a strategy for failure management. Every person in the world has a different failure, and even if generalized or categorized, the broader categories have  many sub categories with so many variations, that it is really impossible to have a formula for it. When every person upto some extent decides and proceeds with his own way of living, and accordingly failures confront him, and hence he has to devise tailor made strategies to face the failure too. But during their grapple with failures few weapons are common to face a confident fight.I feel there are two most important weapons to

Good friends. They are the most important part of our life and sometimes with good effort they become our life.They are the ones, who guide us to good and bad paths. During times of failures having friends really helps us a lot. They are the people who listen to our problems. Even if they don't say anything, mere listening with full patience makes us feel better and their one line, '' everything will be fine'' makes us happy and confident. Friends can be of any form, friends, parents, relatives, cousins etc. But it is really important to distinguish friends from close friends. Of course we only share our feelings with people who come in our inner circle. In everyone's life, we get an opportunity to choose good friends, but we identify them at the wrong time. That is our weakness. I would say, with friendship all other factors of failure management are related. For example, how far can you be motivated without friends by reading motivating books, quotes, etc. If you have friends, most of the time they motivate and it helps a lot. They are just like our counsellors.

Prioritizing problems. We face so many problems simultaneously. I have been facing multiple failures in my personal and professional front. It is like pulling both sunken ships to the shore all by myself. Its hard and the hardest part is to prioritize.Everything seems so important and seeking urgent attention. How could you do that? This cannot be taught in a book, it can be learnt from experiences of others and knowledge of one self and the urgent thing seeking attention. For example a situation might arise in life, where in we have to choose between money for emergency expenditures at family and in another hand reaching the goal, which would need time and money too. In such cases its wise to give importance to the immediate problem and if we are determined and have the energy we would go ahead later. My biggest learning was to  prioritize, facing one problem at a time and keeping in mind about the other. It makes me stay in focus and sometimes, I solve the problem not in focus rather the one is. All that matters to me is solving my problems.

Motivation and never give up attitude is something which we have to carry with us where ever we go and whatever we do in our life. This is the only medicine which keeps us pumping and making us run towards our goal. But it is not always easy to remain motivated. After watching Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, the morning joggers crowd accrued drastically. People in large numbers came to the stadium and it was very difficult to even walk. But after 3 days of rain and 2 days of sunny weather, the ground was empty. Its hard to have motivation for long time. Sportsmen generally get this motivation from their coaches, other people get it from their teachers, mentors and friends in my earlier category. And most of the time, reading the biography of greats and their quotes surely helps, at least makes us think about them.

The Trip

This post for the contest by yatra.com for happy travellers . here 

It was the year 2010, when I and Sneha were married in a typical Indian arranged marriage, much to the happiness of our families. It always takes a longer time to acquaint yourselves to a new person in life and being in an arranged marriage, we are no different, given that we hardly spoke to each other before the wedding. I am a travel enthusiast and Sneha is a good listener, which is what most of our conversations are framed around – travel! She listens to all my stories with childish enthusiasm and enjoys the photographs that I had taken during my trips and was inquisitive about the details. I wondered many times that it was only with these stories that I was developing a rapport with her, but I was happy that we were getting closer.

One day, I was searching the home office for some of my papers but had no luck. And I thought that maybe Sneha has mistakenly put them in one of her drawers and went to look for them. It seemed like an intrusion into a personal space, because I had never touched any of her personal belongings without her knowledge. While disturbing the neatly folded clothes my eyes came across her wedding sari, which for a moment took me back to memories of my wedding. Reaching for it, I realized that it was wrapping something. Unfolding it, I found a diary and was surprised to find it hidden. I never read anyone’s diary but curiosity led me into it. Nonchalantly I kept the clothes back tucked the diary at my back covering it with my shirt and went to the bathroom locking myself in. It was a nice shock to know that my wife is a poet, she has written wonderful romances with a very deep understanding, that talked about everything about love and to her own expectations to get a likeminded partner in life. After skimming through few pages, there was a page titled bucket list, she had dreamt of travelling a lot, enlisting many places in India and abroad. Now it was clear on why she was so curious and eager for my travel stories. I was happy my curiosity took me deeper in to my wife’s heart.

From that moment I was determined to surprise her with a breath-taking travel experience on our anniversary so it would be our first trip together after marriage. I searched for different packages online and got a cheaper deal with an excellent itinerary at yatra.com. I went to their office and opted for a personalized tour. Sneha’s signature was easy to forge, given that it was just alphabets with no labyrinths and submitted her photo from my wallet’s album. All the documentation work was done in a jiffy with the help of their representative. After few days, I got a call from yatra.com informing me that the Visa is ready and I am all set to go. I was so happy that everything had worked according to the plan and that day when I returned home, I asked her to pack her clothes and get ready in less than two hours. She was amazed at me hurrying and was bewildered on the emergency and asked me several times about it but I just said her to get ready and will know all. The same night we reached Delhi and all the way I could see a mixture of both surprise and confusion on her face. We then reached T3 done with our immigration and it was then near the boarding gate she saw ‘Venice’ on the screen. All she could say was “Really?”, with an excitement veiled face and I could see this was the best thing that I could have done for her.

We checked in our hotel in Venice in the evening and took rest. Next day we started our tour to Venice seeing the exquisite monuments, the crowd around and cherishing the history. My wife looking radiant and her sari was feeling the breeze of Venice and I knew that moment that I actually love my wife and she was all I could ask. I had this sudden gut feeling, like the Gods chose a perfect wife for me. Venice was a blessing. Building castles in the air. Floating like a breeze fleeting by. I knew this was the perfect vacation for her. Too many shots on a holiday, I just felt like I needed to wind up. Embrace her a little. Venice was indeed the place to be at that moment. Filled with delicacies and eyebrow rising moments that left us wishing for more. That day was the perfect day in my life. The beautiful city we walking together, then we took a gondola, had the most delicious Italian food but she made dishes better than a renowned chef. I was so proud of her. I will never forget that moment when she embraced me in a tight hug and screamed at the world that there was no moment perfect than what she had at that time. We visited the nearby islands the next day and had a walking tour of the city. We took a late night train to Pisa and next morning it was the most memorable day of my life. It was a perfect sunrise, the rays striking an amazing rainbow at our window and the leaning tower playing hide and seek. I didn’t want to leave the sight of her. We went to the piazza dei miracoli and it was the major attraction. The same day we took a train to ROME.

I guess it is true that goodbyes are harder than hallos. As our vacation was coming to an end, the twinkle in my wife’s eyes said it all. As much as it was sad to leave ROME, we had thrived in pleasure and the memories we shared kept us closer than before. My wife, always budding with appreciation could no longer resist the urge to ask how I had decided a vacation in ROME. Well I found that a little awkward but thank the stars for my charm. I simply whisked her away to a candle lit dinner setting assuring her of even more surprises. As the day to leave finally dawned, we had marvellous views of some of Rome's most famous jewels including St Peters, Castel Sant'Angelo,Trevi fountain, coliseum and the Janiculum (Gianicolo) hill. There’s a belief that when you and a special someone get to visit the Trevi fountain and toss a coin into the fountain, you might be guaranteed a return trip to ROME. Though we didn’t do that, I knew that this wasn’t our last goodbye...All hail ROME! And thanks to Yatra for creating a special time in our lives!!

Quitting

Every human being, in their lifetime atleast once comes across a situation in  which they had bet all their stakes of  will and dreams but simultaneously to achieve that  they have also been falling harder every time and positively never giving up. This situation creates a dilemma in their minds  and seeking motivation and support, they pull themselves apart, unaware of the damage being imposed on the mind and body.They stretch more and more and some day come to this juncture of indecisiveness. It is just like pulling a rubber band, until the force is in its elastic region, there is no harm to the rubber, but when it reaches its plastic region it deforms and more force takes the rubber to its fracture limit and it  finally breaks. It is a very difficult juncture in life knowing when to quit. There are so many quotes, asking us to never give up, not to quit as we might be close to the goal, which are true but personally I feel, giving importance to self and knowledge of capability of individual's mind is the most important thing which has to be considered to know when to quit.

Recently, while seeing the pages in stumble upon, I came across a story of the frog. It is said that frog is the only animal, which is like the human being, able to adjust to its changing  surroundings. If you put frog in a vessel of water it will stay in it. The moment you start heating it, it will adjust its body temperature to the surroundings. When the temperatures tends to touch the boiling point of water, the frog gets unstable and finally dies. It could not then jump from the utensil, as it had no energy left. The lesson from this,written there was, you should know when to quit. If the frog had quit from the vessel before hand, it would have been safe. So you should quit when the time is correct. But my question is, how would have the frog known when to quit? May be the frog was expecting that, the increase in water is momentary and would reduce soon. If the frog had well judged its mental capabilities and strengths, there would have come a stage, at which, the frog was unable to handle the rise and then would have jumped out. The frog was just battling a lost hope. 

This type of situation can arise in a relation between partner or friends, in studies, getting a job, clearing coveted exams, and achieving what you aspire for. On the way, if you have people in your life, who soothe you, talk to you, listen to you, then the tumultuous journey becomes slightly easy. Sometimes we are so much shut to the reality, that we need a slap or a thudding awakening from our loved ones to see the reality and decide wisely. These people are just like medicine for our wounds, curing us faster and making us prepared to walk ahead boldly. But if there are people in your life, they can be friends, parents or lovers, I would say, people whom you love, not understanding you, imposing other restrictions, your journey is bound to be violent. But for them can we quit early? I think we should think to quit, because they are showing the reality in a way which we dont like. It is not something which we had planned.So what about our dreams and aspirations? It all depends on knowing self to strike a balance between our goals and quitting.