Tag: Sunlight

Amber Horizons

Posted on by Ajmal
Amber Horizons. A beautiful sunset sky from Muweilah suburb in the Emirate of Sharjah, UAE

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.

Amber Horizons

Index of montage films I’ve made if you’d like to explore more.

new storylines

Posted on by Ajmal

From an early morning trail. The rising sun is creating the perfect silhouette on the horizon.

Captured from Muweilah in Sharjah during a morning trail

“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

Posted on by Ajmal

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.

Convergence of Faculties, Photographed at Muweilah suburb in Sharjah Emirate, UAE, October 2020

“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

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Tinkering edits with Pixlr. Not remembering where I photographed this from. Probably from Quilon, Kerala.

“Each day is born with a sunrise
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.”

― Suzy Kassem

alchemy of yearning

Posted on by Ajmal
Netta glancing at a beautiful sunrise from Havelock Islands in South India,

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

slipping to the dusk

Posted on by Ajmal

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.”

― Steven Sherrill, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break

Would you love to read more memories?

sprouting skylines

Posted on by Ajmal

A sunset drenched view of an elegant Dubai skyline captured sometime before 2014. Sunlight is painting.

“ Pilgrims from all over the world were making their way to the place deemed the pearl of the Middle East. The city was reminiscent of a modern-day Persepolis. Its buildings, like towering pillars, tested the sky’s limit. The evenly paved roads belched with the smell of new tarmac, as if a million masons woke up every morning and by hand lay asphalt one grain at a time. People of all colors, ethnicities, creed and social statuses came bearing money, knowledge or experience in order to build their legacies in the new kingdom, sprouting out of the desert. Dubai had arrived. ”

― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams