To break the monotony of b/w here is some golden color! Taken at the same place as the one yesterday.

Starting with today, over the next few days, I’ll post some of the photos I shot while taking a walk through a park near my lab a couple of days back.

This photo was a completely random shot. But while reviewing the photos from that day, it seemed to present some interesting possibilities. So I put it through some ideas and this was the result. Nothing serious, just channel mixed in monochrome with the sky pushed near white, then opacity of the layer reduced to zero to retain the faint sepia-like color of the auto white balance and some sharpening in the end to finish things. I think this processing perfectly reflects the title of the photo, and which, in the first place, attracted my eye!

I had noticed this in a shop window while on the way to work a few days ago and had made a mental note to take a photo the next time I had the camera with me. Today, I took my camera out after a long time so I managed to shoot this. Later in the afternoon, I went out with a friend to a park near my lab and took some photos in spite of the freezing cold…brr! While coming back we were rewarded with one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen. But more of that stuff in the days ahead!

Here is the other rain drops shot that I was supposed to put up yesterday. Converted to b/w as I like it in this version.

Outside
The rain walks down
The blind window panes

Inside
Your finger tips trace
My mottled memory-scars

I had written the above words a long time ago. I think they go well with this photo. This is the first in a series of two photos.

This is another of my home experiments with macro. I like the way this shot came out inspite of the seemingly ordinary content. And yes, I do love eggs a lot!

This is a part of the Cologne skyline. In the distance, almost dead center, is the magnificent Dom (cathedral), an amazing example of Gothic architecture. This perspective does not do much justice to the sheer size of the cathedral. I’ve some photos of it that I shot from near it that need to be scanned. If possible, I’ll post them soon.

Some trivia, apparently, there is a building rule here which forbids any building to be taller than the Dom and that the Dom should be visible from any side of the city!

Today I was invited for lunch by an Indian couple to celebrate a major Indian festival that was yesterday. They live on the 14th floor of one of the tallest buildings in Cologne. I took my camera along and managed to take a few shots of the Cologne skyline, one of which I might post tomorrow. But before that, to break the monotony of the recent spate of b/w shots here is a shot of some plastic roses they had.

(An interesting sidelight, although I had slim pickings in terms of nice photos, another friend of mine, who was also at the lunch, borrowed my camera for a short while and got some really good macro shots! The incident showed how much more I’ve to develop in terms of ‘seeing’ something interesting.)

Another one from the archives. This is a friend of mine in whose room this photo was taken. He had asked me to take some photos of him and as he was a willing subject I experimented a bit, with this being one of the results.

I had been wanting to post this for a long, long time but every time while post-processing I would hit a wall, unhappy with what I got. But today, I managed to get something decent.

As you can see from the exif data this is a photo from last month. I revisited this today and I tried out some variations of it in b/w as the color seemed to be taking away the attention from what I thought worked in this photo. To make a short story much shorter I ended up liking it in this version. All I did was to use almost only the red channel and a tiny amount of the green channel while converting it to b/w. Lends it a slightly dramatic tone I think. What do you think?