Sunday Shots: Rain Scenes

Some umbrella moments or rain scenes snapped from last monsoon season. From today morning the whole city is under showering and for last two weeks the rain seems to peek now and then to keep the temperature down to normal. While we’re happy about the rains, the triggering of mosquitos has become a nightmare all these days and they even bite during day times. When we already fighting with Covid these days, the mosquitos were a threat to other fever related illness, so we’re in need to be more awake in preventing the bites and hit the mosquitos.

My balcony is one of my favourite spot at home, and overlooking the street is a better entertainment to sit around the evening or anytime I find leisure. In lockdown days I often hangout at balcony to check activities on road as it becomes lesser but it was almost back to normal now up till 7pm. Today being a Sunday, its total lockdown across the state as all Sundays of July is declared as total lockdown by the govt. and it’s quite peaceful out here other than the TV volumes. Lol

All pics shot with mobile (iphone se) as it comes handy than looking for camera.

Behind the fence

A cat from the neighbourhood taking rest in the shadow of the Indian tulip tree, right opposite to our house and of the neighbour’s fence. This cat is active on the neighbourhood and sometime enters our home at night and trundle the dustbin looking out for something to eat and if we switch on the light it would escape through the window. Other day it caught between the window’s sliding door and cry to exit and we understand from the sound that it was him and dad went and slid the door for it to move out. 

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Indian Black Turtles

From my visit to Amirthi zoological park last month, I took time to watch and shoot the Indian black turtles or pond turtles left in a partial glass tank. I think I last saw live turtles and tortoises in Madras Crocodile Bank, a decade back, but I continue to see these in images from blogs I follow inspired me not to miss shooting these medium-sized freshwater turtle found in South Asia.

Though it named black turtle, the colour of its upper shell or carapace can vary from reddish to dark brown and black with yellow streaks running along its length. The underside is uniformly brown and the turtle’s face may have yellow or orange marks and spots, with color varying between subspecies.

... quiet listeners

The black turtle still appears to be common in India and Nepal is classified as threatened in Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Sunday Photos: Sparkle Fun

During Deepavali I took some fun shots, where I asked my dad to move burning sparkle fireworks in random directions to get these shapes. Every year I used to take some snaps using the firework mode on camera, lighting the sparkles to move in different directors to catch some interesting fire traces. This year it was performed on our balcony, so the moves were restricted to get some simple yet interesting ones.

This give me a perspective of first Tamil letter அ (A)

And this looks as Tamil letter ஒ (O)

Sunday Photos: Fireworks

Some golden aerial fireworks shots from the Diwali night, capture through iPhone from the balcony of our home. 

Following is a short slow motion video of ground chakkara

Sunday Photos: Fern House, Ooty

(click pics for enlarge)

The Fern House in the Ooty Botanical Garden is a glass house we checked last year during the visit to Ooty, aka Nilgiris, is home to many species of ferns and orchids. This house (established in 1894) is dedicated to W.C. Mc. Ivor, in whose response the Garden has been developed to this stage from the then a patch of vegetable garden and wilderness of Shola and shrubs and the lower part as a swamp traversed by deep ravines.

Mr. W.C. Mc. Ivor who had his training at the Royal Botanical Gardens, was able to transform the steep slopes into walks and terraces, lawns and flower beds for growing choice selection of plants. He also improvised ways and means by which he could reclaim the lower part of the garden and converted into undulating and sloping lawns with pockets of ponds left at convenient places to add chart to the landscape.

We just took shots of the fern house from outside during our previous visit in 2008 since the house was locked. Last April there wasn’t much people visiting the garden and the fern house was also opened to visitors and allowed to take photos. Though these pictures are shot from mobile, as my camera was dropped down that previous night, I really liked the outcome and detail on ferns.

My grandmother watching the ferns

Sunday Photos: Fun with sparkler

Sparkler is a popular firework and even those don’t burst crackers would like to hold sparkler which is less dangerous and harm to environment. From kids to old sparklers bring smile and merry during the occasion of Deepavali, and it’s the only firework that I could light. Every year I like creating some images using the firework mode in the camera by letting someone move the burning sparkler in random, as well certain directions to get interesting designs. Usually my father used to help me on the fun task by making different moves on holding the sparkler to let me capture the images. Following are few designs we created together, though he isn’t much interested in what I shoot he was cheerful to execute these for me to exhibit. It gave me different perspectives and I have note it down beneath each image. 

Lighting Diya or traditional clay/oil lamp that lit during diwali

Signature in sparkler 

Tennis Ball

Mersal (மெர்சல்) a Tamil film title

Smiley emotion 

Finally its me hehe

Dog racing a Horse

During an evening at Palavakkam beach in the neighbourhood, few weeks back, I got to see an interesting scene where a dog racing a horse.

The horse rider was running the horse on the beach sand, perhaps to attract customers or training the horse; a dog was chasing the horse and also overrun the horse to stop where it was. The dog should be either his own or coming from the kuppa (fishing village) nearby. They went for about couple of rounds around the beach sand before went afar.

I leave you with few more beach photos back from that evening for your views. Happy Sunday

 

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Sunday Photos: Shimmering

My parent follows the custom of visiting a nearby temple before starting a long journey. Here, every street end or corner has a temple for Lord Ganesh the most and they chose to break coconut and pray at the shrine before we move. At our street there’s a small temple called Sri Valampuri Cithi Vinayagar temple and it has been their starting point for last few years following our shifting to the native area.

It was about 6.30 am when we started our trip to Nilgiris at the beginning of this month and as usual the car stopped in front of the temple and my dad and uncle get down to offer their prayer and right behind us the sun was raising up and the light just falls on the temple and across the sanctum, which inspired me to take the cam and shot at the glowing sight. I zoomed on the sanctum and quite impressed with the sunlight expose over the black sculpture of Lord Ganesh with the gold coated arch behind the idol makes it shimmering.

I have captured this temple few times before with the mobile during the evening walk, but this was a great chance to shoot with the morning sunlight. I am not a morning person and I wake up usually only by 8 am and only during the travel I wake up early or sleepless thinking about the travel, facing the morning sunlight is a delight I cherish until I get to face the same. 

Sunday Photos: Palavakkam Beach

I was at the Palavakkam beach in the neighbourhood today evening with my cousin and got to click some photos with mobile. The day was very hot and being Sunday and summer holidays to kids the beach was unusually crowded and I could see people come as groups of families with boys playing beach crickets around.  

I was also greeted by nice blue sky and simple sunset

Sunday Photos: Beach Sight

Last evening I visited Palavakkam beach and spent some time quenching the thirst for some cool breeze and change of sight. During our stay in Thiruvanmiyur I frequent this beach in south Chennai, but now in Adyar its bit far checking out. It’s really good to see it pretty clean all these days and also becoming popular among locals to hang-out on weekends. I took some photos during the time of relaxing and here it goes: 

Since the evening was cloudy the sunset was pretty mild and boys where playing cricket in the foreground. 

Some pretty houses line the beach front across the sandy playground… which is also the part of the beach.

Soan papdi vendor and the push cart neat the water front  

Sundal  boy! Sundal is a kind of recipe made in white peas and sold as a popular snack in Chennai beaches.

Cotton candy man 

Sunday Photos: Some Scenic Mountain Views

During my last month vacation to Kodaikanal I took a detour through Palani to reach the destination. I have been to Palani before and drove up to the foothills of Kodaikanal, but I really wanted climb up the mountains this way and got the change only this time conveying my parents. I love this route (from Dindigul to Palani) esp. for its scenic landscapes and Western Ghats Mountains range that last throughout the way. And here I share some of the beautiful shots capture during our travel:

The road from Dindigul to Palani has an adjacent footpath laid alongside the road for the devotees to take foot pilgrimage to the Palani Murugan Temple.  The pilgrimage takes paces mostly in the month of Thai and Panguni (January and April) as Thaippoosam and Panguni Uttiram festivals are celebrated during these months.

P.S. Btw. I have completed 11 year in blogging by this June and I quite forget about it… I thank each and every blogger/friends for supporting me on this fabulous journey which I never dreamt of climbing this height. I don’t know what I would have doing now, if not blogging, but my life wouldn’t be this brighter, happier and energetic to look forward in life. If there’s some hope and looking forward thing in life, my blog would take place first and something that keeps me inspiring without second thought. Thank you all :)

Sunday Photos – Uthandi Beach

Couple of weeks back while on ECR, I come across Uthandi beach and spent some time on its peaceful and pretty clean ambience.  Uthandi beach exists (take left) with a km ahead to ECR toll gate, when coming from Chennai, and the beach comes to view at the end of VGP Uthandi Layout. The road to the beach was well laid in concrete and has a police booth at the entrance of the road and also bears barriers across the road to prevent speeding. The layout has moderate number of houses and bungalows to look beautiful and could see many taking walks along their pet dogs – perhaps, because of the strange feeling and loneliness and calm being.

It was about 5.45pm and the place was turning darker as sun hides opposite leaving little light for capturing image. I find the beach to be neatest and pretty clean, perhaps because of fewer visitors and frequented by local residents alone. The new beach also has restrooms to my amazement, with ramp facility and dustbins indicates to keep away trashes. I didn’t take my wheelchair but could experience the serene from inside the car with a desire to be there again on my wheelchair to explore the pretty lanes and houses. I also saw some wonderful gates and fences there, which i like to capture sometime for good fence meme. Hehe... 

wow... we got to see little beach crabs there (one left on car bonnet to shoot)

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