What’s a scarecrow nostalgic for? Its hayday, of course!
Okay, I made up the lame pun in the picture’s caption, but the scarecrow doll here certainly seems nostalgic, doesn’t it?
Halloween month starts tomorrow, and I’m reminded of a road trip along southwest USA that I went on with some friends six years ago this time. We stopped at a pumpkin patch and I, of course, clicked photos of pumpkins and little scarecrow dolls.
A punched ticket. I always used to wonder if I could reuse a ticket if I preserved it for a month. 😀 Well, the tickets did have other components, like the day of the week. But there has to be a day that matches all punched parts on an old ticket, right? (Is this how one begins hoarding tickets? 😉 )
Anyway, these tickets might soon belong only in nostalgic memories, since they’re slowly being replaced by electronic ones.
I wish this picture was that of a real ticket, but there wasn’t one at hand. I used one of my sister’s handy patterned papers instead — she uses the papers for her cardmaking hobby..
Some of Madrid’s cathedrals have great interiors, and that includes ceilings. Take this one, for example. In contrast to the walls and windows, the ceiling was vibrant, with all the colors of a rainbow and then some!
No, I haven’t hiked up this familiar Yosemite rock, but I did go on the smaller (but steep and strenuous towards the end) Mist Trail hike and made it past Vernal fall to the top of Nevada fall. The views on the way and from the top were beautiful, and later, I clicked this picture of Half Dome on my phone.
The best part? I wasn’t at my most physically fit then. 😉 The sense of accomplishment and victory that I felt then is one of the sources of (self-)inspiration for my exercising goals.
With the vacationing Leanne now back home, Monochrome Madness returns with a vengeance, 🙂 with this week being a themed one — Country. I think I have just the picture from my recently concluded vacation at Bali — rice terraces. I clicked this while we were seated for lunch in between our visits to temples, and added a slight split tone during post-processing to accentuate the super-hot afternoon.
Though this is far from a perfect rice terrace photograph, I like it because it reminds me very much of the paddy fields (not terraced ones, though) in my ancestral home town. Well, most of our time in Bali brought back memories of my home town, actually (starting with the weather. 🙂 ) I think this makes the picture also eligible for Sylvain’s latest SL-week theme — Memory!
[Update] Sylvain just let me know that I have won the Memory-themed challenge! Thank you for the wonderful opportunity that you provide through this challenge, Sylvain! 🙂
Fun time! 🙂 My friends and I ran into this depression on some stone steps while roaming around at Chitradurga fort, and it looked very much like a footprint.
Just look at it, with one of my feet for scale. (To answer one of the questions I posed in the title, my feet aren’t tiny.) If it really is a footprint, I’m glad whoever made it is not around anymore. 😉
I played around with color curves in GIMP to add some cool solarization effects to the original photograph. I love the yellow-and-blue rock (muddy brown and black originally) on top-left!
It’s the journey that matters, and the destination is something that one reaches eventually. I find myself agreeing to that whenever I see photographs that I’ve clicked on my way to somewhere. They are far more beautiful to me, and I find myself connecting with them more than I do with the ones I click when I reach my destination. Take for instance this one that I clicked while on a road trip —
Serenity
The scenery was so serene that even now, a long time later, I feel at peace when I see it.
Ceremonial Fire
This ceremonial fire, lit on the occasion of our housewarming, burned bright through the night. (Nah, I just said that last phrase because it rhymes. But then, it did burn bright while it lasted.) This photograph reminds me of how it warmed not only our then-bare house, but also our hearts. And oh, it also hopefully appeased the gods…
Since I still think of Diwali occasionally even though the year is about to end, I went back to browse through my latest Diwali photographs. And found this one photograph that I think makes me recall the weather during Diwali of this year — it has nice little starbursts from the twinkling diya lights.
Twinkling diya lights
It was very windy during the festivities, and I remember how many tweaks I had to apply to my camera settings and how many unsuccessful results I ended up with before finally finishing the season with a good little bunch of photographs. (Persistence is the key, right? 🙂 )
Fireworks
Though it’s been a long time now since the 4th of July fireworks that this shot is from, I relive the occasion when I look at pictures of them. That’s what photographs are, right? Tiny pieces of moments that will be long gone but not forgotten.
For this week’s Daily Prompt.
Interstate Bridge, Washington-Oregon
Bridges always make for such a nice opportunity for photography. Be it the fog-bogged Golden Gate bridge of San Francisco that makes for great ‘road to nowhere‘ pictures, or this one — the Interstate bridge between Washington and Oregon — they are all so varied, yet somehow alike. I saw this bridge from a distance while we approached it, and knew that I just had to capture its super-angular structure. Thankfully, I got a great opportunity because we were in the center lane, and there was not a lot of camera shake while I clicked away. Happiness!
That’s how I feel right now — the Internet at my home is finally back from being dead the whole of last weekend. It made me realize that one’s phone is woefully inadequate for all the million different ways in which one uses the Internet. I consider it an achievement that I’m posting an entry to this week’s photo challenge at all. 😀
At the top
Anyway, moving on to a different achievement. Do you see the tiny people waving from the top of the rock? 🙂 That’s our friends, relaxing after a steep climb — they sometimes had to go on all fours — at Chitradurga to reach ‘Thuppada Kola’ (Pond of Ghee), the cylindrical structure on which they are seated. Of course, there’s no pond filled with ghee there nowadays; legend says there was. This photograph reminds me of a time when I was forced into trying out rappeling, of which I have no pictures. The only difference is that I was petrified while on top, and waving when I was finally on the ground. 😉
Half a photograph 