Just Photos: a Journal by Srinivas

All things great and small, the good Lord made them all!  Even on a stormy evening, one can find beauty in the most mundane of creations around us. Here is a simple blade of grass, in all its splendor.

With the trips to the grocery store somewhat curtailed, still finding ways to maintain a healthy intake.  Here is a study in parts of an invigorating petit dejeuner, with a fresh green apple, some frozen cherries and blueberries, garnished for effect with some solid water. Bon appétit!

One can entertain oneself in self-imprisonment with a few simple, cool tools quite easily.  A snap ware bowl, a couple of tablespoons of oil, and a few diluted drops of Diamine Cerise Ink, and you got yourself some entertainment.  A coffee table with a glass top and a tiny set of LED lights with or without filters covered by a paper napkin for somewhat diffuse backlighting, and you are ready to go. Being a 70s kind of guy, I always wanted a lava lamp, and never got around to getting one.  But this will do just fine: Good, brief bouts of respite from the torture of interminable BlueJeans meetings.

What a pleasant sight to give you company for the morning coffee! I finally found a bird willing to reveal itself from among the 100s chirping in the trees in the backyard every morning and evening, camouflaged so well that I could only hear, but never see, them.  But this American Robin was proudly surveying the world around it, oblivious of the gazing eyes and the lens trained on it.  What a joy!

So, the moon was prowling the Western skies this evening as usual, flaunting his rugged features. He noticed this pretty, bright stranger, Venus, in the neighborhood. His knees went weak and his heart skipped a beat.  He had to befriend this Goddess.  He presented himself and made his best overtures. Venus had seen many a moon in her day, and wasn't impressed.  Besides, there was room only for one bright celestial being in the neighborhood, and she sure wasn't going to let that be this craggy, crescent shaped rock. She spurned him with no compunction, and the moon slunk away, wounded and whimpering in the disappointment of rejection. Venus, the haughty Goddess that she was, now the brightest in the neighborhood, befriended some lesser beings in the neighborhood and ruled over her own domain. The end.

A marvel of minimalist and effective design, the Chemex coffeemaker has been in my household for about twenty years.  There is not much to it, except the closely held belief that cleanliness is paramount if you want a clean, smooth brew to assuage and rejuvenate the far recesses of your palate, and of course, your mind.  A glass carafe, a paper filter, some fresh roasted, medium-fine ground coffee, and some clean, filtered water, heated to 195-205 F, and you have some of the cleanest, smoothest coffee that is humanly possible. This manual pour-over technique eliminates all bells and whistles, the same ones that lead to the accumulation of "gunk" (a most scientific term) in office coffee machines that perhaps carry more mold and critters than coffee.  Invented by Peter Schlumbohm in 1941, the Chemex is such a significant "back-to-basics" object of the coffee world that it finds itself in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The hourglass-s

A walk to the neighborhood elementary school along peaceful roads toward the end of a weekend day can be quite relaxing.  And it has a way of unearthing simple treasures that nature scatters around, often with the help of intrepid landscape artists. Some wild bulbs with shoots that look like asparagus adorn the sidewalk. And the landscaping at the entrance of a nearby rental community glows in bright colors with the skies as the backdrop. The sunlight peeking through once in a while along the walk lights up the irises by the street. Roundleaf ragworts grow like wildflowers in the grassy areas along the street. Google says this light violet plant is a ribwort plantain or a buckhorn. And then there are the Robin's plantain flowers, also known as blue spring daisies.  No one even seems to care for them or about them, but they render beauty to the streets in inconspicuous ways. These bearded irises in someone's yard have seen better days and are o

It is incredible to see how many videos and tutorials there are on youtube explaining interesting little projects one can do in every realm of life, and especially in photography, photo editing, etc.  This video by Gavin Hoey was suggested to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKp8YO2DkwA I found it intriguing and tried it out with a very simple setup today.  All that it needed was a glass of water, a background he provides that you can print out, and a sheet of glass or plexiglass with a black background on which to rest the glass.  And of course, a camera with a tripod.  I was able to put this together in a few minutes, and the magic of reversal of an image due to refraction/internal reflection, and other optics phenomena leads to an interesting geometric pattern with a, dare I say, artistic quality. Feel free to try out some of these experiments shown in the video yourself. After this initial experiment, I decided to try out a couple of more patterns. These were d

The worldwide imprisonment, while causing inconveniences, is a bit more palatable when the Guy Upstairs provides such new, spectacular paintings in the sky every day. This front row seat to nature's glory has had a calming, soothing influence, and is a blessing in these turbulent times.

The clear night afforded good views of the big dipper (Ursa Major) in the Northern sky right from the front porch.  This is its journey over 11 minutes from 10:15 - 10:26 PM. This is the very first constellation I learned about as a kid in the Boy Scouts decades ago, and it is fun to see it on the move.

The birds have been busy in the trees in the front and backyards with a variety of chirps and tweets, making quite the din.  But they are so small and so well hidden in the thick green foliage, it has been hard to spot them, even from under or next to the trees, except when they dart out at Mach 3 hurrying off to God knows where.  I stepped out this evening around 7:15 PM to see if I could at least see one bird, and was able to catch a few, with some persistence. These are some pretty ordinary looking birds, and they are tiny birds shot from far away with a 200 mm lens, so the pics are not very good.  But it is something to have a few shots of these elusive little fliers. There were American Robins nestled in the tree and on the rooftop of the neighbor. There were mourning doves. A male house finch. A Carolina Wren. And more American Robins. Meanwhile, a bunny has been making an appearance off and on in the yard, and as I was on the hun

To paraphrase an old commercial, "The best part of waking up, is moka in your cup!" https://photos.app.goo.gl/BASWDvzCTDM7n73f9 The day after the rains with the birds chirping in the backyard, a perfect way to start off the morning in a reflective mood.