Tag: Passion

irrigating passion

Posted on by Ajmal
a capture of my brother photographing the wide gardens near Ras Al khor wildlife sanctuary in the UAE.

Lately, I have been thoroughly pondering on the aspect of irrigating the mind. Experiences and my reads have encompassed me with the discernment that the soul has to be irrigated for consistency and to be filled with life. Our faith, trust, passions, love and life as a whole needs to be irrigated. The passions are to be fuelled to keep them from dying how dwarfed it might be in the rush of our lives. We’ve to hold to that rope and do our best in a positive sense within our individual means and situations to kindle the fire of aspects and things we are passionate about. Don’t leave them away. Don’t let the chores and events crush your passions and dreams. The border of a mind is a signature that I’m endeavoring with the limited time I’ve to candle a flame I’ve for art, visual imagery and a positive vibe in general. With you, I’m trying to remember that even though data has a decisive role on much of life’s decision making, it’s truly passion that provides purpose and an organic direction of where we’re heading to. We’ve to rewind that in our mind in channeling time.

Remember Job from the Heart that we talked about few years back ?
I’d like to link this as well: Quality | indelible objectivity

the lab of dreams

Posted on by Ajmal
the lab

This work of art was inspired during a visit to Netta’s work laboratory in a university in Dubai. Although I worked on it pretty in the instant, I liked the way it turned out. From the colors and shades of the equipment to the stickers around to vibrant tones of chemicals around, it all set that mood to instigate a creative fervor. Notice the DNA shades on my tees as well. Now, this is a frame that was bound to happen right down to its finest details. I’d like to correlate this theme with something else.

Today I was listening to a generic talk and the speaker was gently enunciating that what we physically work on or dream initially forms as an abstract in our mind. Any material object that we procure or any project that we pursue would first form in our minds. So, he was saying that in order to chase dreams, first sculpt them in our minds with a deep passion and to try our best to draw in an action plan to chase it. Very interesting. Our mind is the lab of our dreams If we philosophically postulate an extension for this artwork. God bless.

re-scaping tank

Posted on by Ajmal

After over 6 months, I decided to do a deep clean of our little tank and re-scape the entire foundation of the tank. Took more than 3 hours from the deep cleaning to the removal of stains and dirt from the tree barks. I was literally surprised at the amount of dirt accumulated with wooden blocks submerged in water. After a thorough cleaning process, I removed one of the barks and decided to go with only one bark to give a more roomy and wide space for the Neon tetras to swim around. Upon reading somewhere, I learned that Neon tetras are more comfortable with open wide spaces. The half-moon betta is not in the photograph, and it seems to be unwell for the past week or so. I doubt it’s related to the chemistry of the tank, as I’ve been using some new conditioners for curating the water quality in the tank.

3 hours of re-scaping work

I’ve been reading and watching a lot of aqua-scaping tutorials on different layouts possible in a smaller tank and I was inclined to a more simple one as opposed to the seemingly dense option we had previously. After removing the dirt from the soil bed, I filtered them out by removing floating watery dirt with a manual water pump by water cycles of over 8 to 9. Later, I deep cleaned every single element in the aquarium and separated flora which was affected by line algae which were dominant in the aquarium. Netta helped through all the stages. I removed one of the wooden blocks, set up a new tree bark in an inclined position with ferns slowly arranged on the top. Meanwhile, I planted the grass and Japanese Hydrocotyle on the front side of the tank. I hope it will take up a more dense profile as time passes. But now we have a minimal, simple, and much cleaner and roomier tank space, and here’s the final result.

A much more roomier tank. Excuse those flying ferns on the top. More on that below.

One thing what I learned from this whole process is that when we do a deep cleaning for the tank and if there are ferns to be included, they need to be attached to the wooden barks by some means. Either it can be a glue or they can be manually inserted into any holes or spaces available in the bark or by another means. Even though I watered them slowly, I found out that the ferns were floating around after the pump and filter started working. So, I should be taking care of it in the next episode of this whole thing.If you love aquascaping, skim through Story de’aquatics.

I have also written a detailed article on Planted aquariums – How to make them last based on my personal experience of setting everything on my own.
And yes, we love short videos, and here are the ones on those themes
Fluvial Zeal | The Woodland | Neon Gems

garden of thoughts.

Posted on by Ajmal


Recently I read a very interesting post on what really matters on what you build and long for. It can be anything – it can be a product, a service, experiences, personal connections, travel spaces, mindset, you name it.

“Do you see all those people who whipping their smartphones out as soon as they get on the train or stand in a queue? They’re not just avoiding boredom, they’re searching—but not only for information, or laughs, or updates. They are searching for a feeling of connection.

We want places to go and places to be. Places to kill time and places that make us feel a little less lonely in the moment. Places to learn. Places to share. Places that make us feel safe, or smart, or welcomed, or funny, or hopeful for the future. But most of all, we want places to belong and places where we feel like we matter.

Those places used to be our family homes, our dinner tables at 6 pm, or football games with friends on Saturday afternoons. Increasingly they are digital spaces.

Whatever you’re building, think beyond features, functionality and design and think first about how the person you serve wants to feel when she arrives at the place you’ve built.” [ source ]

This is exactly on the nail on how I conceive and present the soul of The Border Of a Mind to you as a valuable reader. As I wrote previously, I put my heart and soul into every little word, graphic and theme that you find inscribed here. In this world of bustle and commotion, I always love to prepare this place as sort of a virtual garden of my thoughts and whisk it with some spice of original arts and photography.

Picture in the brain.

Posted on by Ajmal

Interesting conversation with Dave Howells, advertising photographer, and ex-photojournalist as he’d love to call himself. He explains how he creates his signature frames and his experiences photographing famous people in his clientele. It’s the passion of a person towards his craft like this that puts a quintal of inspiration into you. Thanks, Becki and Chris for hosting this.

Some stuff from the conversation that I felt entertaining:

  • The earlier you get in on a job, the more input you have – one of the earliest piece of advise that he received when he started pursuing photography.
  • Advertising – clients pay for ideas. Editorials – Client pay for filling space in the newspaper or magazine.
  • He walks through his decades of experience in photography in news and media. Technologies that used to be the thing at that time pop up occasionally during the conversation (high-speed flash, for instance). Very interesting.
  • He was asked who was his favorite among the famous people whom he had photographed and he responded that his favourites aren’t famous and that everyone has a story.
  • “If I think your idea is crap, I’ll tell you it’s crap and I’ll be fairly blunt about it in a charming accent, but if it’s a brilliant idea, I’ll probably steal it“, he says.
  • “It’s not about the gear, the picture should happen in your brain long before it’s got to your fingers“
  • ” There’re a lot of photographers who photograph what people look like, but there’re only a few who take pictures of who they are!” Wow.
  • “The more you shoot, the better you get.“
  • ” Ready, fire, aim“