Noticing the beauty in patterns

I took this picture in Pittsburgh this past Thanksgiving when we drove there to see some friends. A trip to Mount Washington was planned for my roommate who accompanied us on her first time Pittsburgh visit. While other were enjoying Pittsburgh in a nice (cold!) afternoon, I was busy looking for patterns! I've tried to do the same with umbrellas in a row or even decorative lights in rows, but never really succeeded to bring out the beauty in them! Here - I like the way the lights seem to grow shorter and almost appear like pins on paper! Not the greatest of shots with so much cloud cover, but I like the concept of taking such pictures...

Btw, I joined an informal class to learn photography - well digital photography and today we had our first class. Our teacher talked about aperture, exposure, speed and the like - some basics before we get into the real stuff :) After years of oohing and aahing at pictures taken by others I've decided to spend some time and put some effort into this. My husband kept reminding me to stop complaining about not being able to take good pictures and register for the class :)! Its amazing that when I see a bridge its just a bridge - a pretty mundane sight - but when I see pictures of that same bridge taken by others it bowls me over... So now, I'm getting into the magic of photography!

Out of the Blue!

I took this picture in Boston a while ago and thought it was interesting! Its an art gallery in Cambridge. Couldn't go in because it was closed, but seems like a really 'out of the blue' place! Is it just a coincidence that the trash cans beside it and the building in the back on the left hand side is some shade of blue? My husband noticed it while we were in the area and brought it to my attention! I guess we can really spot interesting things around if we keep our eyes open to these things. Otherwise who has the time to take a moment and pause in this cold weather to notice such amazing things! Local flavor is always more colorful, inventive and interesting than those run of the mill chain stores! So pause and take a look...

The Odd Picture

We all come across funny sounding names of roads, towns and people. For example, today on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me (the veritable gold mine of odd bits of information on NPR) I heard the story of Bryan Scott Moron (that is his real name) who was arrested in Texas after he drove his truck into somebody's house while driving drunk.

I have this habit of reading aloud names of shops, roads, billboards, street signs etc. From time to time friends and family traveling with me in the car get quite annoyed by it. The flip side is that I notice much odd stuff that tickles my funny bone. There have been many such occasions when I wished I had a camera in hand to take a snap of these rare birds. Occasionally however I do have a camera handy. So here are a few peculiar snaps... I will keep posting these from time to time on Photo Chronicles.

These were taken during our trip to San Francisco last summer when we were waiting outside an Italian restaurant. The first one is just an alliterative road name:

In case you are wondering... here is the map link to it. I think I took the picture of this sign at the intersection of Green St. (aka BBB Blvd) and Columbus Ave.

This next one encapsulates the woes of finding parking in a busy city... something I am getting awfully familiar with. This sign was above the door of the Italian restaurant (The Trattoria Volare) where we had dinner that evening.

Hope you too stop to notice the occasional odd picture and enjoy it.

The Beautiful Cape Cod & Its Lighthouses

I was watching the Travel channel on TV today and they were showing some nice sunny and warm (!) places... Ah, that's just what I needed to get out of this dreary mood all the rain and cloudiness brings to me. We just spent our Summer in Boston and a lil' bit in Florida and in San Francisco. Yep, I had a glorious summer. One nice Saturday morning, we decided to drive down to Cape Cod. Here are a few pictures I took with my digital camera*...
This is a charming view of the Highland Light/Cape Cod Light. Is there something like a perfect picture? I've been hoping to take one... Of course, until now I wasn't as invested in photography as some of the amateurs are. But now I've decided to put some effort and make every shot count!

This is another view of the Highland Light/Cape Cod Light. Just a simple trick of foreground/ background comparison. I always wonder - are accidental pictures better or planned ones like the one above. Once I realized that contrasting the foreground and background created a nice effect, that's all I could think of that day. So I clicked a lot of pictures like this one.


I love this picture! Before going to Cape Cod I had seen some pictures on travel websites and I had fallen in love with those... So I was trying to "score" an awesome picture - the one that I could boast about... And this one turned out to be one of them! I took a lot of pictures at this venue and realized that framing the lighthouse with the wooden fence looked so much better than just the lighthouse. And the bonus was the contrast between some green and rest brown grass...

To me, this looks like a perfect place to live! Ah, Cape Cod - I'll come back to visit you again.

* I have changed the saturation on some of these pictures.

The glory of Fall

A thought of creating some sort of photo diary has been at the back of my mind for a while now. For some reason, it just took me some time to actually start writing and sharing some pictures that I love. Most of the pictures have been taken by me, where they are not - I'll make sure I attribute it to the rightful photographer. You are welcome to use these images for non-profit purposes only. You can do so AS LONG AS you reference it back to my website.

Why a blog instead of something like Flickr? Well, just because... I'd like to write a line or two, or sometimes more about the picture(s) I share. The idea is to write either about one specific picture, its background or some story connected with it OR to assemble a few pictures about one specific place, incident or theme and write about it.

I start my 'picture chronicles' with some pictures that have been taken in Fall in the North-East of the United States. Most of them have been taken in central Pennsylvania.


I woke up one day to see a hint of color on the leaves on a foggy morning... While on one hand there was some regret about the end of Summer approaching, there was also an anticipation of the arriving Fall. I have always had mixed feelings about Fall - a sort of love and hate relationship.



I like this picture because of all the beautiful colors. This was early Fall when some trees had already shed leaves and were standing bare while others were beginning to dress up! The blue and sometimes almost white sky and the white picket fence framing the trees is what I love about this picture.



The quintessential charm of Fall colors in the North-East... For me this is what makes the snow covered cold winters bearable! I'm reminded somehow of women in India, dressing up in the most colorful and beautiful sarees! Alas, this beauty fades too soon with all the leaves falling down... This picture was taken by my roommate while taking the stroll on our university campus.