Out of This World

Textures and patterns in everyday objects can seem extraordinary and out of this world when one pays a little attention to them.

Cheeky

This cat looks so cheeky that I thought it apt to leave its eyes in their original color in what was supposed to be a black and white picture!

Bird’s Eye View

Birds atop a lamp post. Wonder what they see….

Tropical Rain Forest

At East Mebon, Cambodia.

For Jennifer Nichole Wells’ Color Your World Challenge: Tropical Rain Forest. Fits  the theme color-wise as well as climate-wise. 😉

Silver linings

Sunset walk by a quiet lake, with the breeze blowing in your hair, hills looming in the distance, and the sky filled with silver-lined clouds as far as you can see. A wonderful ambience, and an instant pick-me-up!

Resilient

Gently lapping water — despite seeming benign and being constantly pushed back by the land, it endures and keeps pushing back until entire coastlines are eroded away….

What’s around the bend?

… More trees, hopefully. 🙂 Isn’t a tree-lined road perfect for a long drive?

For themed Monochrome Madness: Road. Some painterly effect added in.

Waves

This picture is from one of my attempts at long exposure photography without a tripod, especially when there was no elbow support to keep my arms steady. 😀 Not deterred by the initial blurred results with longer exposures, I was able to manage this fairly good picture with an exposure time of slightly more than half a second. (Hurrah!)

Clicked at Tanah Lot, Bali during a sunset.

For themed Monochrome Madness: Movement.

Contrails

Another picture I came across while going through my photographs for my previous post.

Clicked while roaming in the gardens surrounding the Irish Museum of Modern Art at Dublin.

For this week’s Monochrome Madness.

Curves and carvings

Nary a straight line here! 🙂

Walls in temples are usually covered in small, hand-sculpted carvings like these. Sometimes, their details are just astounding.

Clicked at Lepakshi temple, India..

What’s inside?

It’s almost themed-MM time again, and this month, Leanne has given us the word ‘Closed’. For this theme, I clicked a macro shot of this small container that lies in my cupboard. Extremely glittery and adorned all around with glassy / plasticky trinkets, my mom received this along with a gift that is usually given to guests at some kinds of religious ceremonies in India.

Wonder what’s inside?

It contains kumkuma (kumkum), a powder that is applied on the forehead. Because the container catches the light and glitters when I open my cupboard, I end up using the powder now and then. Maybe that was my mom’s intention when she placed this garish piece in my room. 🙂

Gerbera duality

Coincidentally, this week’s Monochrome Madness is both a 2-year anniversary and a theme — Closeup. Congratulations to Leanne, and a big thank you as well for hosting it for so long. I don’t participate every week, but in the weeks when I don’t submit anything, I still don’t miss out on looking at everyone else’s submissions. 😉

So for this momentous week, Leanne suggested we try combining the two occasions in our submissions, and incorporating ‘two’ somewhere in them. While I wondered what to click for this dual theme, I decided to go through my old pictures as well. I came across another macro shot of the Gerbera that I loved photographing a while ago, and had an idea. Most of the lower part of the picture was in shadow, so I rotated a copy of the image and overlaid it on the original. Kinda like the face cards in a deck of playing cards. The overlay, with some playing around with the masking and shading in the layers, makes the picture look like a reflection, but also not a reflection. I love, love this duality! ❤ I’m waiting to see the other MM submissions — Leanne will publish them all on Thursday.

This picture is an addition to my Flowers series as well.