Light has a quiet way of transforming a space. The golden slant of the afternoon sun spilling across a wooden floor. The flicker of candlelight making shadows dance on the walls. The way city lights reflect on rain-soaked streets, turning the ordinary into something almost magical. The same room feels different at dawn than it does at dusk. In the morning, light is sharp, filling every corner with possibility. By evening, it softens, wrapping the space in a quiet kind of warmth. Even the harsh glow of a fluorescent bulb or the dim flicker of a dying lamp shifts how a place feels, how we feel within it. Perhaps that is why we are drawn to certain kinds of light. The way fairy lights make a room feel like a memory. The way firelight makes us feel safe. The way sunlight through lace curtains can make even an ordinary afternoon feel like something sacred. Light does not change what a place is, but it changes how we see it. Maybe that is true for more than just rooms. Maybe our lives, too, can feel different simply by shifting what we let in, what we focus on, what we allow to illuminate the spaces within us.
Tag: Sunlight
Amber Horizons
It’s one of the greatest privileges and reminiscences that I affirm with lot of gratitude is to have a balcony facing the West side without any major obstruction like buildings and other structures. With full realization that it won’t be forever, everyday, I’m always in awe of the beautiful compositions on the sky each day. It’s like having a customized subtle and private light show on your window every single day. Some days, it could be foggy and naive, whereas some days it would be a spectacularly vibrant and coruscating canvas on the sky. I captured this amber based theme on a beautiful evening. I wanted to test the night mode capabilities on Netta’s phone as well. I’m taking this moment to have a pause and appreciate what a beautiful blessing it is to just marvel at this scene. It’s one the key aspects of this interim and temporary home that I’m staying. Afterall, what’s permanent in this world ? Every moment, every aspect of our lives has intricacies in it that nudge you to remind of the transience of this world. Even this spectacular view isn’t permanent as well.
Index of montage films I’ve made if you’d like to explore more.
new storylines
From an early morning trail. The rising sun is creating the perfect silhouette on the horizon.
“Part of what makes roads, trails and paths so unique as built structures is that they cannot be perceived as a whole all at once by a sedentary onlooker. They unfold in time as one travels along them, just as a story does as one listens or reads, and a hairpin turn is like a plot twist, a steep ascent a building of suspense to the view at the summit, a fork in the road an introduction of a new storyline, arrival the end of the story. Just as writing allows one to read the words of someone who is absent, so roads make it possible to trace the route of the absent. Roads are a record of those who have gone before and to follow them is to follow people who are no longer there…”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust
convergence of faculties
This photograph would easily be one of my recent favorites in terms of framing. I was staying on a traffic lane and the car just stopped at this beautiful frame at the centre, as if this moment of click was to converge and fall in place like a click of a button or a tight latch. Although the overly done post-processing is off the roof, I just wanted it to be illuminated this way.
“To photograph is to hold one’s breath when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers
how your story begins
Tinkering edits with Pixlr. Not remembering where I photographed this from. Probably from Quilon, Kerala.
“Each day is born with a sunrise
― Suzy Kassem
and ends in a sunset, the same way we
open our eyes to see the light,
and close them to hear the dark.
You have no control over
how your story begins or ends.
But by now, you should know that
all things have an ending.
Every spark returns to darkness.
Every sound returns to silence.
And every flower returns to sleep
with the earth.
The journey of the sun
and moon is predictable
But yours,
is your ultimate
ART.”
alchemy of yearning
Sunrise, beach, clear skies. They’re a perfect alchemy of yearning.
“With a bound, the sun of a molten fiery red cam above the horizon, and immediately thousands of little birds sang out for joy, and a soft chorus of mysterious, glad murmurs came forth from the earth; the low whispering wind left its hiding-place among the clefts and hollows of the hills, and wandered among the rustling herbs and trees, waking the flower-buds to the life of another day.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell,Ruth
blissful sunshine
“With a little heartache;
Gone with the time,
Are certain memories,
Intricately designed.
To call & narrate
A story of blissful sunshine.”
― Somya Kedia
Light is one of our favorite themes. Delve in more.
Slipping to the Dusk
Clouds of Fire
Scurry home
Sprouting Skylines
Orange creep on swirling clouds
The flicker of leaves
The golden lamp
Camels on the horizon
slipping to the dusk
It’s one of my favorite divertissements to scroll through old Google Photos archives, spice up old photos and just wonder about the times back in those days. When I first started working in the Middle East nearly 10 years back from today, during some of my initial years, my work extensively involved being associated with designing and developing new engineering products in a factory (For example, Bridge Bearings, products used in offshore structures, etc ) and I used to spend a lot of time in a factory environment with some colleagues at that time for some prototyping and other work. I have vivid memories of returning back from work in the afternoon at that time gazing at the sun playing its magic of colors at the factory horizon. These are some of those photographs from circa 2010-2011. Believe me, old photographs are time machines for me. I can spend an entire day reminiscing in these old memories. Do you have such photographic memories from the past decade that you recollect? Share your thoughts. I would love to read them.
“There is a certain quality of light to be found only in midsummer in the South, as day, slipping into dusk, acquiesces to the filament, the bulb, the porch light; this seductive light is beautiful when it washes across dry cement, the sidewalk and stoop. The light spilling from the phone booth softens and cleanses all that it touches. It’s a forgiving and almost protective light. The Minotaur is drawn to it from across the parking lot.”
― The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break
Would you love to read more memories?
clouds of fire.
“The blue of daylight
fades and chills as the sun sinks
beneath clouds of fire.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes
Captured by Netta. Retouched by yours truly.
