Reflective Splendor

Photography of reflections is one of the toughest parts of it...

i) Find some water body which is perfectly still.. if not .. the reflections get disturbed..
ii) An angle wide enough to get all interesting stuff covered in the reflection.
iii) A good angle to avoid any glaring effects from sun..
iv) Most importantly, find some appealing scenary causing the reflection!

Getting all this together in one pic is next to impossible.. but my best attempts here:

No wide angle to cover all the interesting parts in a reflection..

lots of sunlight.. and water is crystal clear.. but not still....

Not as good as it appears when it gets reflected!

The Flower Power

Disclaimer: I am not an expert in taxonomy of flowers.. and definitely not an expert in giving the right names to colors.. So, what I call orange.. u may call pink ! ;) Whats more important to me are the flowers themselves and how beautiful they are.. so, I don't want to be talking too much abt it... the pics speak for themselves!

So lemme start off with a lavender flower..

and a purple orchid... hope i got it all right upto this point :)

This is WHITE.. I cant get it wrong!... and I'm pretty sure this is a variety of rose (open for debate...)

I call this orange...

and this one pink!!

Three Words

CUTE...

INNOCENT...

and ROMANTIC!!!

Just 3 words for the three best shots I could get at Kerry Park. By the way .. I had actually been there to get this one...

Heavenly Abode

Bored of staying confined in a hotel room for too long..no matter how posh .. how elegantly stylishly luxurious with its interiors.... it is still a cell like room from outside!! So, I went in search of some houses with exteriors that would suit my choice and here are a couple of them I found interesting.

The first one I chose as my winter guest house, given that it would remain equally green in this evergreen state... the water may just be frozen.. which i feel only adds to the beauty and here it is

For the summer, I would probably choose a simpler one.. with a simple entrance

I don't need a red carpet.. this would do...

And again, I do not want to miss the colors... So some trees like these by the side of the path way

Leading to the house....

Located here!!!
(best viewed large by clicking on the image)

The H2O Effect

Want to know what H2O does to images ?

(View enlarged images by clicking on these pictures
in order to appreciate the difference)

Now.. see the same flower without it ...

Even worse.. imagine this place.. without H2O :)

The Missing Colors

I have noticed that most of my posts have been missing the essential ingredient of an attractive photo blog.... the multitude of colors of nature! Most of my blogs so far have been in green, white and blue. I realize that I have been trying to cook sweets without sugar... (not to discount the fact that Washington is the evergreen state of US .... so in a way green represents WA).

But, from now on .... I will make sure I add the right quantity of sugar.. So, atleast for the next week.. my blog shall contain.. one colorful post apart from the waterfalls and mountains. To make up for the lost colors.. I shall post some colors thats have been prominently missing so far..

Is there anything better than red roses that I can start with.. to depict the colors ? probably not... So here are some red roses for the rose lovers...

How about some yellow ?


And pink.....

Honing My Photography Skills

I have started realizing what difference photography can make to the appearance of the object... Here is a waterfall, pretty much ... similar to the ones I posted earlier... in its appearance to the naked eye ... the only difference being my honed photography skills !

Over the past week.. I have visited so many waterfalls.. that I can now post a waterfall a day!! I am contemplating on having a theme for the posts over the next week... which would accommodate every place visited and every object photographed over the past one week!

Simple Solutions to the Puzzle

Some simple yet concrete solutions to the "mountain and the sky" puzzles posted earlier here. It must now be easy to trace where the mountains end w.r.t clouds!!

About this pic.. sorry about the poor clarity as this one was shot while the aircraft was descending towards the Seattle Tacoma International Airport.. and was cutting through the clouds.. The moist window and moving flight... resulted in a poor image.. Yet.. I hope it provides the right solution to the puzzle!

Another interesting pic from the flight is here:

Fauna Of The Wild West

Here is a small collection of the fauna of the wild west that I could capture in their natural habitat. This one was the toughest.. had to take atleast about 8 shots before getting this one!

A curious look... as though my camera was an AK-58 manufactured specially to aim at it.

Spain in western US..

Gubbachi :)

A cute lil squirrel posing for me...

This was the easiest one. The bird flew on to my window assuming it would get the entire strawberry cheese muffin for itself (which was btw the only source to keep my demanding tummy happy). I was about to get buckled up... I had to stop with the belt half way towards the buckle.. and quickly grab my camera.. forget about focusing and get this shot!

Sky is the limit

Here are some simple puzzles. Your job is to trace the boundary lines between the mountain and the sky !! keep trying...





PS: These are images of Mt Rainier ..as visible to naked eye (on the day I visited)... and haven't been digitally modified to reduce the difficulty of the puzzle ! [;)]

The Rainier Cascades

The cascades of Mt Rainier are unique as most of them are found right next to the road or some of them are actually right below the wheels of your car. I am also planning a visit to the Northern Cascades National Park, but the scary part of the plan is that no water fall in that place seems to be accessible without a 3 mile hike through slippery rocks making it practically impossible to cover more than 2 of them over a weekend inspite of the park itself being home for more than 30 cascades.

Up here, we could easily stop over 5 of them as we drove up hill towards Paradise Point (Most popular view point on Mt Rainier). Most of them are not called with names .. or to be frank I do not know them ;) The first one is here:

The next was the most surprising one! As I drove through the road, we could hear a distinct sound of water gushing through some place.. looked all around.. simply could not find any water fall anywhere around.. surprisingly no tourists around too! After we drove about 1/2 a mile more... we found that we were actually driving above this fall :)

This is the cutest one .. about 20-25 ft... but really cute.. sorry about the poor clarity.. it was a desperate attempt to get the effect of a smooth surface of water in the pic .. with manual settings and slow shutter speeds.. this way i found out how shaky our hands are at the age of 25 ;) the next time I shoot this.. I'll have a tripod!

This is the most popular falls in Mt Rainier..called "NARADA" falls.. yes its an Indian name! Did u know it means "uncontaminated" or "pure" ? I felt embarrassed enough to find this out from a board in a remote corner of US ! Anyways.. unfortunately for us..the trail to Narada falls was closed due to a fresh landslide.. The best we could see was this

The best snap I could take without a tripod was of another cascade nearby:

Lake Alder

Lake Alder is the first among many lakes we got to see at the base of Mt Rainier. Engineers in US have this strange habit of constructing dams for lakes in hilly terrains to effectively harvest rain water at a much larger scale than we plan to do by collecting water from terrace drains ;).

Here is how the one on Alder looks like....

The lakes do not tolerate this inhuman (or shud i say human ?) oppression imposed on them and decide to vent out their frustration by waging an invasion on the poor and helpless flora neighboring them, like the barbaric invader Alauddin Khilji, who beheaded the beautiful harmless idols at Belur.

The result is here for you to see...

Yet another lake on the way....this time serene and peaceful without a dam