Snow is on my mind

So, I'm back. After almost 10 months to date. A beautiful New England Summer and Fall have come and gone, Winter is at its peak. Life has been busy, and I haven't found the initiative to write anything. But as always, I've kept clicking. I take this entry to share some current pics - snow, snow and more snow.

Santa's in trouble ya'll!

Although it was bone shattering cold outside, I saw some sun one afternoon and ventured out to take some pics. Here are some pictures that shows a winter with some personality!
Is that a CAR under that while pile of snow?

Beautiful wind vanes

I'm coming back to writing this blog after a long time. My last hiatus was 4 months, and this one has been 8 months long. Life has been busy, obviously. But I keep thinking if it has been busy enough to have kept me from coming here once in a while. I spent the first year writing regularly and slowly that enthusiasm seems to have faded... And that is quite unfortunate. I received an email from a stranger the other day - asking why I had stopped writing! Guess it's time to pick up the proverbial pen again...

I spent a few months last summer on the West coast and had a great time exploring and taking pictures in the Pacific Northwest. Now that I'm back, I'm hoping to explore a lot more of the Northeast. I also have a brand new camera: a Canon Powershot SX20! Let me share a few pictures I took with it a few days ago. The theme is: wind vanes. There are so many different kinds of wind vanes around this area, here's only a few that I've photographed in the Harvard University vicinity and some in Concord, MA.

Picturesque Nantucket

The island of Nantucket is situated just off of the East coast of the U.S., near the Massachusetts border. We drove down to Harwich port from Boston and then took a ferry ride to the island. Home to beautiful 17th century architecture, picturesque beaches, quaint shops, light houses and the juice guys (!), Nantucket island is a photographer's dream come true.
I've been smitten by anything New England-y/Lighthouse-y since last Summer (that's when I first saw the light houses on Cape Cod) and when I saw an advertisement for a sandcastle festival being held on Nantucket, we just had to go see it! We went to Jetties beach, where the sandcastle festival was being held. Micheal Phelps and the Olympics were a favorite choice of sand sculpture, while we also saw Nantucket based themes, popular literature (Moby 'Brick') , a sea turtle and a Ganesha sand sculpture!!!We rented a couple of bikes and roamed around the island a little bit - went to the Surfside beach which is known for its big waves... While coming back on the ferry, a hailstorm caught up with us! And guess what - in a true amateur fashion, I made use of that opportunity for taking pictures :-) Oh, by the way, I've finally decided to upload my pictures to Flickr. So now you can take a look at the Nantucket photostream here.

Do we live in a crazy world or what?

Just saw something hilarious and had to write about it! This is printed on the screens on all the windows in our new apartment - I thought it was hilarious that they would write it that way :)Sometimes I wonder if this is actually for someone's safety or just to avoid lawsuits! "not intended to provide for the retention of objects or persons from the interior"!!! Could somebody actually mistake it for a strong support?

Finding glamor in the mundane...

I admire people who find glamor in the mundane... I had seen a picture of a bridge among Steven Pinker's collection of photos in and near Boston - he's a professor at Harvard and has an awesome collection! I would have seen only a bridge, but Dr. Pinker found out a way to get past the obvious and bring out the beauty in the surroundings. Here's the picture in question. How did he do that? Well, framing the sky, the bridge and the water in right amounts is where the art is. I've been to most of the places he captures, but have not been able to get past the daily routine of traveling thro' these places to be able to notice what now seems obvious!

So coming back to the point - I decided to capture the mundane in the hope of finding something interesting. Found a bunch of keys nearby - they are mundane enough, aren't they? So here's what I tried first - just a top view of the keys...Disappointing, isn't it? I thought so... But decided against giving up! So after trying a few different angles, here's what came up! Not totally glamorous, but more interesting than the first one for sure... So what did I learn today? Of course - the most obvious is to not give up! And something else - finding the best position for your camera lens is the most important thing you'd do. Getting good pictures (even with a digital camera!) is not as easy as point and click as they'd have you believe... it takes time and effort and commitment to the task. Most of us are generally satisfied with run of the mill pictures - nothing really wrong in that - but lately I've tried to be a little more involved in pictures I take and it has been wonderful!

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 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.