‘Tis is the season of love, the month of Valentine plus we have an extra day to celebrate this month of February as it is a leap year. Here are some pictures from my travels around showing that love and romance abounds if one strives for it. The journey does not mean love for a fellow human being, there is love in the innocence of the child and it is also found in the maturity of the old. One can romance nature or find love in things we want to do. So live it up and enjoy this small photojourney by Chintan.

The child loves everything he does – here he is romancing the water hose and living life. (Friend’s Kid : Lonavala, India)

Things we love to do exhilerates our mind, body and spirit – a truly meditative experience (Jackson Hole, Wyoming, US)

The young heart flutters when it meets that special someone. (Campos De Jordao, Brazil)

Mutual affection and love shared (London, UK)

Along the journey called life, we are so caught up in moving along, making sure we make the most of the time we have on this planet that we forget everything else. The people we see on the streets, and smiles on the children’s faces make so much of a difference, a simple Hello or a Hi will change someone’s day. You never know, you could be the reason someone smiles or the reason why someone’s day got better.. So, here is Kumaran sharing images that he says made a difference to his life….

A passion to freeze a moment and hold it for the years to come is an art, an art for a person who wants to see the world in a different perspective and love the beauty of it by making a photograph.

Clicking a picture is easy…and more so in this technology savvy world. But the challenge lies in capturing the moment, emotions and the real expressions in one’s life.  Children have always been the favourite subject for any passionate photographer. They always portrait the true feeling at any situation and bring out that childishness and innocence.

Freedom Behind bars

My first encounter with my favourite subject was at a government school in Chennai on Independence Day. It was my first such experience and i thoroughly enjoyed observing their actions & reactions, but capturing those precious moments on a photograph was quite the challenge. I had to unleash the child within to enjoy the experience.

Smiles galore

No wonder photographers are always fond of children… they are cute, they are fun and they are a challenge!

As we travel through life, there are some who we meet, and some we pass by. At times, there are also those who capture our hearts, for reasons unknown. This adds to the beauty of our lives. Sharada Balasubramanian, a frealance writer shares two such photographs taken during her travels.

1. The boy’s name is Abu Husain. He is 14 years old though he does not look like one. As we got off Erawadi Dargah and stepped into an unchartered destination of Valinokkam, this little boy offered to show us his home town. He took us far to the beach and showed us the difference between a calm sea and a fierce sea. The calm sea, he says is penn (woman) kadal (sea) and the ferocious one is the  aan (man) kadal (ocean). We wanted to give him freebies and all he wanted was a Rs 5 orange stick, which he gladly relished.

2.I met this little boy when I took on the long stretch of dry sand road in Dhanushkodi to watch the land that was submerged and destroyed with the 1964 cyclones. The boy in the picture and his family still live there and sell conch shells and small things to make their living. Though they do not have a great source of earning, they still live there, for they believe its their land, and they have every right to be there, than scooting away after cyclonic storms.

With the holiday season coming up, am sure everyone is looking forward to planning their holidays, either to exotic new destinations, or head back home for some family time! And holidays are also a lovely opportunity to give, and share which includes gifts as well. These days, people are looking for alternative gifts that break the boundaries of traditional art of gifting. People are keen on creating gifts, which adds to the value of the gift and makes them feel nice and cared for.

Snapfish has brought forth some amazing offers for all those who are into photography and would love to create photo books or calendars as gifts. Simply choose the photographs you desire, choose the layout style and place the order! Your gift will land at your doorstep within a few days and you are all set to put it in your suitcase to give to your loved ones.

If you are staring at your computer screen or tired of looking at the zillion websites, it is time for you to visit Snapfish.com, create an account and have some fun with your gift!!

Happy Holidays!

Walking along the streets in our home town or in a place we are vacationing in, the most interesting aspect are the people we come across. They could be people wandering around the streets, or from the tribes that come to set up stalls to sell their ware. Aarti Krishnakumar shares a few photographs of a few fascinating people she has encountered during her travails…

While in Goa, one day i decided to explore Anjuna beach and the cafe there-Curlies.. Walking around the rocks and the rugged shorelines, i saw this tribal woman standing near a makeshift stall. As i made a beeline towards her, she spotted me, stood up smiling and asked if i wanted to buy something… She had a wide collection of tribal pattern bracelets, neck pieces and other such trinkets.. I asked if i could take her photograph for which she retorted- you can take my photo, if you buy one item from here.. Seemed like a good deal and i went ahead capturing her. Her attire, jewellery and stature was fascinating!

This man has me in splits even today. Standing outside the car, staring at the Sadras fort, wondering if the ASI rep was still around or had gone for the day, i noticed this man come up to me asking if i wanted to look around.. He had glitter, an orange colour whistle, and a cheap shades on his eyes. He exclaimed that he was the guard, and that he came from his daughter’s birthday party and would show me around… Umm, understanding something was fishy, i managed to ward him off and make a quick getaway…

Heading off to the Blue hills- Nilgiris, I got the opportunity to cover the Dog Show in Ooty. Amidst pet owners and breeders, there was one breeder who had with him a litter of St. Bernard puppies.. Along with many others, i too went to take a look at the cuties.. One girl managed to convince her dad to buy her one and here she is all smiles..

Everytime i travel, i look forward to meeting people who make the experience that much more beautiful and interesting… Off i go in hope of meeting many more such people….

There is colour, action, devotion and life on the streets of Bangalore when the Ganesh Festival begins. Every one is trying to be part of the festival as they bring the deity home . Capturing the essence of it is travel writer Lakshmi Sharath…

We travel to see places – temples, forts, beaches, resorts…but what really makes a trip memorable are the people we meet. Anuradha shares her experience of travelling to a new destination and coming across interesting strangers…

I usually avoided photographing people, since I felt I might be invading their privacy, but of late, I have learnt to take their permission and click away. Here are some of my attempts from my last few trips….

There are those who are used to people photographing them – like this policeman at Pondicherry who helped us find the place we were looking for, and then cheerfully posed for us…. He said that people regularly asked him to pose, for he wore the Kepi – the trademark red hat, a reminder of the French influence in the area.

And then there were these men at Mount Abu, dressed in traditional Rajasthani attire, pushing a trolley, which they used to ferry both, luggage and people. But more importantly, they were there to give the kids a joyride. They hounded us from the minute we arrived, but turned back with a smile when we refused, and didn’t mind when I clicked them!

There are those who make the most of the tourist boom, whose golden tongue keeps us enthralled!
Our guide at Sajjangarh Fort was one of these…. He spoke with an enthusiasm rarely seen among guides, told us so many stories (for once, quite accurate, historically!) and when I told him to start his own blog/website, told me that he was completely satisfied with his life and the money he made, and didn’t really want anything more! He is truly the most contented person I have ever met!

Another is a young boy, probably in his teens, yet he works magic with his hands – or rather, his ‘sleight of hand’! when he called us, saying that he would show us some magic tricks, I was skeptical, but he kept us laughing as he worked his magic, and even my son, who can never sit still, and who has a shorter attention span than anyone else, couldn’t take his eyes off! As we took his photograph, he blithely told us that his magic tricks are on youtube!

Finally, there are those who are the true wanderers – those whose souls cannot rest in one place… such as this old man we met at Anegundi (Hampi). He has lived in 4 states in India, travelled all over the country, and visited so many places I have only dreamt about! He spends 6 months in an ashram, helping the less fortunate, and spends the rest of the year satisfying his wanderlust!

After meeting him, I can’t think of calling myself a traveller!

When we see something that captures our attention, we are drawn towards it. there are times we have no logic as to why that happens. Similarly, there are so many things during the course of our day that mesmerize us, and transport us to another world. Sangeeth, an avid photographer shares some shots that held his attention and made him wonder, digging deeper..

The lone bench in the neighborhood park seemed to stare at me, inviting me. Almost all other benches were taken, with people busy catching up, gossiping or simply giving their feet some rest. But this bench was forlorn, longing for some company. As I walked along, the bench seemed to fade away into the oblivion, just like the words that I heard floating in the air.

The lamp, burning brightly at the temple altar. While on a holiday with my parents, I wandered around the temple, trying to understanding the architecture, and the various sculptures. There were little nooks around every shrine with a lamp lit in them.

There were many women praying , walking along the narrow corridors, and every now and then one would stop by a shrine, and light a lamp, say an extra prayer and move on. It amazed me to see the amount of power FAITH has , and how people seemed to rely on a single PRAYER even when all else failed.

The things we see in our daily lives, the people we pass by and the moments that capture our mind.  Chandrachoodan, the man behind the Chennai Photowalk concept shares some of the snapshots from his photowalks across the city and the myriads of lives that make the city what it is.

IT’S 7 AM on a Sunday, and Madras is already sizzling. I am perched patiently on a pile of bricks on a corner of a busy street. Eye to the viewfinder, fingers testing the trigger, I scan for signs of human activity.

As on many Sundays, I am photowalking. Trying to improve my photography, break the routine and hunt for the strange, the beautiful and the inspiring in the streets of Madras. As is common to those who wait long minutes, hours, for their prey, I too speculate.

Imagine, I tell myself, having to walk the world on four legs. Stooped. Bent. What a tragedy that would be, for we would never hold in our hands tools, such as an Oldowan stone chopper. Or the Nikon D80.

We, the people, have got to walk on our legs. Our species, the Homo-Sapiens-Sapiens evolved, survived and flourished entirely due to a simple accident: bipedalism. While quadrupeds – deer and other game – could outrun us in the short term, they quickly lost stamina, and had to rest. Just about long enough so we the bipeds, slowly walking up to the resting animals, could hunt them, eat them and survive the violent cradle that Africa was and is.

Why bipedalism evolved is a question best left to palaeontologists and archaeologists, such as David Jordan. Perhaps because trees, in a world that was younger and fresher, could now grow taller and further out of the reach of our primeval primate fathers; who had no choice but to stand up and be counted if they had to eat. Perhaps we took to our feet because food was scarce, and energy had to be conserved; standing tall meant less surface area exposed to the harsh climates of middle Africa.

Whatever the reason, Bipedalism gave us a singular advantage. Our top/front limbs could be freed to manipulate tools, giving rise to our species’ defining characteristic: creating resources rather than just consuming them. Creating art.
The sun’s climbing steadily up the sky, a path mirrored by the mercury in the thermometer. An old man shuffles by, finds the only spot of shade in an otherwise boiling pavement: the shadow of a lamppost. He huddles himself there, and resumes watching the street. Click.

ART ON MY BRAIN

Photography: Grecian economy of words, it describes light leaving its ephemeral traces on paper. That our species can read these traces, that we can read meaning into these traces and look for, in the words of Roland Barthes, the Punctum among all the Studium, is an accident.

The early hominids’ (the large biological khandan that humans are a part of) brains were getting bigger and bigger, and before long, our heads were almost too big to go through our mother’s birth canal. We had to be born earlier. Premature. This forced us, then and now, to look up to someone bigger, better and benevolent, for our safety. Perhaps one logical reason for the birth of religion and spirituality.

In any case, the larger brains that humans inherited meant greater processing power, acutely developed senses, and wired up, highly connected, abstraction-metaphor-pattern seeking intellect. The human eye, one on each side of a forward looking face, could perceive colour, depth, motion and edges. Our visual system became closely connected to our emotional system. We could see all.
The religion and spirituality caused by our near-death birth experience, and the 3D world of our visual perception, potent forces each, when they came together, boom!

Art.

Caves exploded in colour, stones whittled away into sculptures. Sculptures that were tools. Tools, in their perfect symmetry, pieces of art.
Wait. Wait. What’s that there? Oh, brilliant. A “sastrigal”, white dhoti flapping, crosses the street, stopping the traffic with a nonchalant, disdainful little wave of his arm. HAS TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED.

There are times when we are busy with our lives that we fail to notice the people and things that pass through our journey. First in the series of sharing moments from day to day life, we bring to you Kolkata based Sukanto Mukherjee‘s snapshots. An avid photographer, he has managed to capture such simple moments and share them with us.

Walking on the road, taking shots of people along the street is one way of capturing the myriad of life in a town. This picture was shot on a small traffic intersection in Kolkata. The man in the frame seems to be one of the self-appointed ‘traffic guards’ of the city – something very common here that predates the likes of citizen activism and civic police. Irrespective of the fact whether the vehicles obey his instructions or not, he seems to be holding his own, with the cap and sunglasses making him stand out literally. Maybe very few know where he is from or what really drives him to do such a thing on a summer afternoon. But one thing is clear: he clearly does not seem to care. The reason why I shot this in black and white is that Kolkata is a city which in many aspects seems merrily stuck in the past. Adding a bit of charm to the man, the photograph speaks quite the tale.

Life in Kolkata is quite predictable. You will find a lot of people relaxing on a balmy weekend evening at one of the watering holes in Kolkata. I took this shot at one of the more popular places in the city. As is typical with Bengalis, no conversation is complete without a few puffs, and the old world steel ashtrays complete the picture. As some of us were pondering over world-changing issues, a friend put his cigarette on the ashtray, and it made for a perfect frame with the beer bottles in the background. Again, the black and white matched the nature of such discussions – which tend to colour views in either black or white.