Life Through a Pinhole

Happy Holidays

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 13:17:00 +0000

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year

The Escape

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 22:08:00 +0000

This bird feeder outside my old apartment always looked more like a jail to me. No wonder I never saw any birds around it.

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No Lifeguard on Duty

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:26:00 +0000

It is fun to visit places during the odd season of the year.

The Dock

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 04:40:00 +0000

Taken at Smith Mountain Lake early Spring. The rain clouds scared me well from using the camera for long. In fact it started raining bad fifteen minutes into this shot.

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The Wait

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 04:00:00 +0000

On a warm summer evening, I joined these lovely birds and waited for an hour for the sun to set to create this mystical and soothing reality.

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Under The Bridge

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 03:27:00 +0000

The underbelly of the New Gorge River bridge in West Virginia - the one that we cat-walked across with nothing but that zip-line for safety

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The Passage

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:47:00 +0000

I know it is going to be fine but I am still scared to take the first step. Sigh!

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Love of my Life

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:31:00 +0000

Do I need to say more.

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Battlefield

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 04:24:00 +0000

This sculpture near the NC State Capitol is a tribute to the Vietnam Veterans. Click here to see the before and after version of this heavily processed picture.

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The Andrews

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 03:39:00 +0000

Time for a history lesson. This monument of the US presidents from North Carolina outside the NC Capitol in downtown Raleigh shows the seventh president Andrew Jackson on the horse and the seventeenth president Andrew Jonson below.

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Two's Company

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 05:03:00 +0000

"Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd. One is a wanderer."

- James Thurber

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Mischievous Smile

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 05:49:00 +0000

With such an innocent mischievous smile, who would want to say no to trouble.

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The Eyes

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 17:28:00 +0000

"Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child's eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below" -- George Orwell

Contemplative

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 15:26:00 +0000

Sculpture of a giraffe family at the NC zoo taken a while back.

The Bridge

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 05:29:00 +0000

This is the famous New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia. After getting totally lucky to be at the spot at the right time to get a perfect reflection of the bridge, Kalpana and I went for the bridge walk - a catwalk under the bridge, 861 feet above the river, held for life by a mere zip-line. It was scary in the beginning but fun. (More details about the bridge walk - http://www.bridgewalk.com)

West Virginia Rapids

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 04:56:00 +0000

Posting after a long break. This was taken during the trip to West Virginia this summer. Did not have a ND filter and used a delayed shutter speed. (Can see the effect of not using the filter in the over exposed skies, yikes! :) )

Biker Boys

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 04:11:00 +0000

When the going gets tough ..... they just sit by the side of the road. Two of my friends - Ashwin and Ravi - they are the biker boys!

Shot at a 2 sec exposure with the 10-22mm at 16mm, this one is heavily cropped. I am still amazed to see how the auto-focus kicked in to save some grace.

TRONed

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 03:42:00 +0000

Looking for falling meteors can be really frustrating especially when there are none to find and also when you misread the forecast. However, it is good to have your biker friends around as they provide that last bit of inspiration to make the best use of the night.

Midnight Sky

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 02:59:00 +0000

Last Saturday Kalpana and I went star gazing in the middle of the night with my other shutterbug friends - Ravi, Ashwin and Veena. The Delta Aquarid meteor shower was supposed to be at its peak that weekend. As we wanted a predominantly dark spot, we went to the bridge over Jordon Lake on HW 751. The sky was clear and it was perfect only that we just spotted a mere two meteors. Anyway, this shot was taken with 10-22mm lens at 10mm with an aperture of f/3.5 at ISO 400 and an exposure of 18 seconds. Didn't turn as bad as I thought it would in the pitch dark.

Jungle Ride

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 12:20:00 +0000

I guess they purposely paint these jeeps yellow to attract the animals or more correctly said - animals with cameras. :)

Lost in the woods

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 14:27:00 +0000

If I am ever lost in the woods, I would like to lie on the ground and keep staring at the sky until I die.

Standing tall

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 04:20:00 +0000

This summer Kalpana and I went to the NC zoo at Asheboro with some friends from work. The NC zoo is lovely but massive. It has two sections - Africa and America - and a five mile walk connecting the two. It is like you start from Africa (or America) walk five miles, see all the animals and get back to where you started from. It must have been a 95 F summer day. We started in Africa and having walked 2.5 miles (which took more than couple of hours thanks to the million breaks that we took to take pictures and watch the animals), we were totally exhausted and decided to go back. I wonder how the animals survive such harsh weather.

Ready to set sail

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 03:27:00 +0000

This picture was taken at Smith Mountain Lake state park which is very close to Lynchburg (Virgnia) where Kalpana and I had gone to visit my friend Aths. The lake has a small beach but as it was still spring the beach was closed for any activities. Good for me. I was able to capture this shot with almost no one in the vicinity :)

Back from break

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 04:33:00 +0000

Dear friends,

Hope you all are having a lovely summer.

I am back to regular blogging after a nice break of three months. A lot has happened since my last post. Kalpana and I finally found the house that we were looking to buy and last week we finally moved in. We are very excited about this change and we hope for good things to come. We have been pretty busy lately, trying to get the best deals on furniture and other accessories .. in the process of making the house our home. :)

I have a tons of pictures that I want to share from various trips. Stay tuned. Also, the blog has a new theme - black is back !

Behind the glass veil

noreply@blogger.com (Piyush Garyali) — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 13:19:00 +0000

The view of the Capitol from a lower level glass ceiling. Love the way the struts create a mishmash pattern of black over the otherwise white monument.