Thursday, December 31, 2009

Last Sunrise of 2009

Last Sunrise
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 .......

Monday, December 14, 2009

National Orchid Garden - 3

white flower Singapore Botanical Garden

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

Saturday, December 12, 2009

National Orchid Garden - 2

cont…..

On _MG_6189entering 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….

_MG_6190_MG_6196   _MG_6184  some with spots ,

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some in bunches,

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and some single

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and a few more in various mixes….

_MG_6329 _MG_6486 _MG_6489

to be continued with other colours…..

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

National Orchid Garden - 1

Purple Orchid
A rainy morning in Singapore, saw Sandeep Padhye, author of a popular blog on living at Singapore (http://www.icare2share.com) andNational Orchid Garden Singapore 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 Singapore Harbourseen 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.
Purple Orchid1  Purple Orchid2
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 …….

Dance of Death

A beautiful, warm, s_MG_3680ummers morning saw me strolling along the Avon river in Christchurch, when I spied two gulls fighting with each other over some food .

 

Fights between _MG_3681birds are common. The Cathedral square has a whole bunch of birds fighting with each other over scraps of food left by _MG_3682the 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. _MG_3688

 

At least that was how it looked to me.

 

_MG_3689

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……