Ghumakkar's Diary

Months back I started posting Smiles through a series Smiley Saturdays . So today I am publishing  a collage of the pics ( few of them ) I posted as Smiley Saturday. All of it :) This picture post is an Entry to PADE-2013, a month long  Photo-blog  event. To know more and participate, click  here  or  here . Check themes  here .  

This Diwali, I was lucky enough to witness the famous Nag Nathaiya festival of Varanasi . Thanks to my best friend’s father, we got VIP passes of the fest and with the help of DSLR and its long zoom lens, could get VIP-Media treatment too. I took a lot of pictures of the festival, and to not to miss a single Best shot – I was on Burst mode. Back home, doing basic processing I got what I love to discover – a pristine Smile ! This smile developed on an old lady’s face, when she was able to reach the feet of Krishna and accomplish a feat! Religiously pure bliss, Blessed!  Look at the anxiety on the Old Lady's face (Behind the marigold flower, left corner) And now the Smile of Being Blessed :) Shot these pictures using Nikon D5000 using 55-300 lens at f/4.8 Exposure 1/100 ISO700 and edited on Picasa for dramatic enhancement of the subject. Keep smiling, Keep posing :)

Story of  Two Smiles and A Frown, Tale of the Richest Candy Lady of Town! Ladakh region provides an opportunity to appreciate the faces! One would just fall in love with them and the super innocent expressions they carry. My Zanskar trip proved to be an extravagant chance to capture few of those expressive moments, especially Smiles. These smiles we captured near Rangdum. We were distributing candies to the kids, when one of those kids asked us to give a few to a cute girl. She exchanged a mystically innocent smile when I handed over a few candies. Reason? She got her share moments ago from my friend on the other side of taxi, and what I gave made her richer than the guys there! She was so cute, that I couldn't resist offering her a few more :)  Following are the smiles (and a frown) telling the story... Mr Advocate (for the pretty Lady)'s Smile Richest Lady of the Kid-clan Mr Advocate after realising the Lady got hell more...

Back to Smiley Saturdays , would try to post few Zanskari/Ladakhi smiles through coming Saturdays. I shot this Smile, somewhere near Padum . We were reaching Padum, after a ‘not to remember’ night at Rangdum . Our first destination was Medical Centre, so it somehow explains what we had the last night. Entering Padum, shivering with cold (~6 o C ‘ only ’) we met two kids, returning from School with one kid having ‘ his shoes in hands ’, and they passed, what I strive to click, Smiles! These smiles were shot by NikonD5000, 18-55kit lens at 1/2500 f9 800ISO through the window of our moving taxi. I just fell in love with the kid with pink-cap :)

At times, it's not just about Winning. Accomplishing a part of your dreams too leads to Smiles. This happened with us on our last Football Tournament. On paper, our team the Energy Hawks was Third. We gave our one of the Best performance against the 2nd favorite team in semis, but lost the match in penalty shoot-out. It was a recurrence of what happened last year. Scared us, played for the 3rd position against the Dark Horse team of the tournament and finally won it. It wasn't our best show, but sheer feeling of Winning brought us the Smile of Accomplishment. This picture wasn't shot by me, but my friend Jaswinder aka JD who came at the right moment and voluntarily became our official photographer ( Mind it, none of the other teams had any ). The Energy Hawks (Nikon D5000 18-55mm Auto mode shot) Another shot of an Accomplished GoaldKeeper's Smile.... Deepak - Undisputed Best Goalie of the Tournament (Nikon D5000 18-55mm Auto mode shot) Keep Smiling....I l...

If procrastination can be expressed through a smile, I would have posted mine in the series  J Seriousness (!) apart, I clicked this smile of a fellow colleague at a recent departmental Cricket tournament. The spark in the smile is heart-winning, with instant realization of some victory in background. They won their match after I took the smile J We will win! Captured it on my D5000-300mm kit. Basic editing done.

Already about 50days of the Year 2012 have passed, and such a lazy bum, me, couldn't be able to post a Single Saturday-Smile ! Procrastination is the term, coined to define goodfellas like us! Well, it's not that I didn't click this year; but it's all about the habit I am habituated with to delay the thing to nearest appropriate time, that I couldn't post the Smile. Writing, the above 30+ words long sentence, an interesting point popped up in to my mind. Accepting that it's one's fault generally appears that is another way to avoid the scenario otherwise! Anyways, this picture I clicked on our first ride of the Year to Assisi Bhavan . I first thought not to post those pictures with that post, then I just couldn't control myself as those pictures were the soul of the post. First picture is of Aunt Maggi who had a thousand stories to share with us. 2minutes is her nickname, eternal is though her charm. Precious Charming Smile of Aunt Maggi The...

(This is not a post on Resolutions, just the Wishes!) In few hours we’ll be into another New Year, year 2012. When I look back to the last 365 or 364 days and few hours a lot of tales, told – untold, experiences, emotions and a lot, I find swimming through the time. Few lines have never been sufficient to write down what I’ve felt, but a write-up of limited words is what I like to read and thus share too…. Me, Achtung, Rides and the People Achtung - BisonsRideHard A year back, Dec 2010, I wasn’t an Inddiethumpers . Year later, Dec 2011, I ain’t! I bought mu bull, Achtung, little over two years back. Rode some of the best rides with office mates, and then got to know about the largest Bullet Club of the Nation – the Inddiethumpers! You’ll die to join the club if you have been with them even for a chae-sutta ride, and so did I. I did my life’s longest ride of some 5000km , Mumbat to Kolkata and back, with Guri pa ji, Ganesh, Ranjit, Rahul, Kaka and others of Inddiethumper...

"Smile is the most inexpensive and easiest deliverable, with a positive note not only in the Hearts of Sender, but definitely on the chords of Receiver too - Ghumakkar" Started with a deal of posting a Smile every Saturday, changed to alternate Saturdays or at least when I have a new Smile, I could able to post some 12 Smiles last year, mostly kids and teens with a Mystic  and Potato-Smiley ! Here's the Year 2011-Smiles in Collage... Year 2011's Smiles :) Here is the last post of the Year on my favorite Smiley Saturdays label...a pair of Happy Cute Angels dancing on Goan music..... Blushed! She knew every Song the guys played... Shy Queen....a Break Free Dancer! Shot these pictures on our recent visit to Goa, at Mackie's Saturday Night Market near Baga-Calangute Beach, North Goa, using my new 55-300mm lens... With lots of Smiley wishes, lets Welcome the New Year....

A Teen Smile November was a month of traveling but alas, no posts. With December, 1/3 rd already spent, two half-done posts and a ride scheduled for tomorrow morning, here I am back with another nostalgic smile – a teenage smile ! This pic I shot during my November trip to Jamshedpur or Tata. The kid is my friend’s cousin, Rishu . I loved the innocence yet a zeal to express and prove I am not a kid, but the one who’s trying to equal you adults. Bragging how he had an Orkut account in Std VI and now owns an FB account, yet posing with trees with a smile worth a click…. Rishu and his charming teen smile Shot this picture through 55-300mm lens on D5000. Just a jealous wish, as in last post,  I wish I had that life back..................

This year, though just for 2days, I was finally able to visit my Banaras to spend the Diwali time with my best mates. Like the Holi visit, one of the most important part of the visit was photography . So, we had a Subah-e-Banaras and caught as many as angles of the ghats and the visitors as our naive brains can allow and imagine. At one of the ghats, we found children of 10-12 years group fighting, pushing each-other and diving in the river Ganga. Though I do have a merry life, but the break-free attitude they had...made me real envy. I was living the best life, when I wasn't aware of the terms - caste, society, politics, professionalism and so on....with the waning years, my enthusiasm towards everything, including Life and Myself - the two things I love most! Anyways, I clicked this photo just a few days back at a ghat of Banaras using my old D5000 and a new 55-300 lens. Just the basic editing has been done. No cropping, as I wanted to show the ' regular ' life al...

This week I am posting another unadulterated picture, that I took on my short ride to a Mazaar . On that ride I met Moin , and have posted his ' posed for newspaper ' Smile earlier. This time I am sharing Smiles of Saddam and his friends. They were there from Kalyan , without telling their parents about their day's out. The time I spent with them sent me into nostalgia about the teenage years and no-facebook era. So plain in talk, planning simple tricks to fool their parents on their whereabouts, curious about the DSLR I carried and asking for a ride on my Acthtung....really life is still the same for many of us, who are far from the concrete. Don't remember what was the reason of this laugh-burst, but does the reason matters? Shot this picture with D5000, 18-55, daylight, with Mumbra town in background.

This year I had privilege to visit world-famous Aamchi Mumbai's Ganapati Visharjan . The event is such a treat for photography enthusiasts. All thanks to my photography guru Mr. Abhimanyu. I picked a lot of pics of Bappa, and was to able to take a cute smile of God's gift to earth, a happy child ! The innocent smile with no impurity and adulteration has touched my heart. I realized now why cheating is called as 'adult'eration :) The un-adulterated innocent smile with the Bappa in background  I took this pic on Nov 9, 2011 through my D5000 18-55 lens, in day light.

After a long gap, and missed Sundays on different lame reasons, here I'm with another post on Smiley Saturday series. This one I picked at my Odisha visit early this year. Actually, I got two pictures of this old man in two-entirely different moods. One I already posted earlier , and here is the one which is more about a mystic or mysterious, don't know exactly what, smile! Picked it on my D5000, 18-55 lens; one of my all time favorite.