Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

It’s been some time since our last blog post and it has not been because of the lack of important events in our lives. On the contrary, so much has been happening that we hardly have enough time to write about it! In the past 2 years we have gone through the trauma of losing loved ones, achieved several personal goals and we welcomed a new member of the family.

Richelle Arya born on 9^th November 2011

Parenthood has been more exhilarating and more challenging than we ever dreamed was possible. Every day we learn something new about her as well as ourselves and it’s amazing how fast she is growing up. And she is a great model for me to practice photography on.

Olympics 2012

Laundry Day

Going out

Want an apple?

Hopefully will be doing more posts in the future, so stay tuned.

All the very best for 2013! 

Once upon a time...

The 26th of December is a memorable day for both of us..... 

If ever there was a true story that was stranger than fiction, we think you will find this is it. From the bride’s dress to the groom’s shoes, from the facial to the flowers ... it seemed like everything that could go wrong WOULD go wrong … but as all of you who attended our wedding would know … we made it ... and yes, we loved every minute of it!

The Decision…

After contemplating over it for many many months and going through what seemed like a million arguments, we decided to celebrate our love in front of family and friends. We both agreed we wanted a small but very special wedding where we could just have fun with our loved ones.  Little did we know that planning the dream wedding … especially planning one in Sri Lanka, while you are in the UK is much easier said than done.

The Dress…

Having the cake and eating it.....

Another year has passed by and as I grow older, my birthdays just become better :D 

  

You may already know how my wife makes my birthday truly special – with lots of yummy food, delicious cake and loads of prezzies – this year was no exception!

  

It all started out with a lot of “secret” shopping on Friday, which Mich did all by herself. On Saturday, she had to work and then we went to Pioshy/Lionel’s place for a dinner (Pioshy’s bday was on the 6th) getting back at about 11pm. Since there was a lot to do, she started prepping stuff that night itself and went to sleep at 4am! I was banned from entering the kitchen so could not help out in anyway as she wanted it to be a surprise. Sunday, she woke up at  7.00am and went straight in to the kitchen to start all the cooking for the special bday dinner – to which she had invited Pioshy/Lionel as well as Lasa/Imal.

  

A lot of effort and time went into preparing a fantastic Caribbean + Sri Lankan   menu. Being a hot summer day we started off with a Caribbean style cantaloupe drink (bits of cantaloupe mixed with sweetened milk and topped off with pomegranate slush, almond flakes and pomegranate seeds). The starter was a ‘Coconut shredded shrimp’ with yoghurt and coriander sauce which was absolutely delicious.

Dancing Damsels

Some of the pictures from this shoot were featured in the Sunday Observer Magazine on 1^st November 2009 (online version here and here).

One of our dear friends, Chathu, is a dancer of extra ordinary talent and experience. She has been dancing professionally for more than 14 years and has performed in over 20 countries worldwide. She has her own dance troupe, Ethnic Dance Studio, who perform at corporate events and shows but this year she wanted to do her own show to showcase the troupe’s talents. 

As part of the promotional material for the event, she wanted a few shots to be taken of troupe and herself and as luck would have it, I was in Sri Lanka at that time to help out. I was quite nervous about doing a “professional” shoot – it would be the first time that I will be “directing” live models (other than for my wife) and I had to ensure that I had at least a few “winners” that they can use for their newspaper articles, promotional leaflets, souvenirs and website. So the pressure was on - I was not sure whether I was going to be able to do it but I was sure going to try.

The shoot was challenging for me on many fronts

1)     There were 5 dancers for the group shots and I had to ensure that ALL their faces could be seen properly. This was a bit difficult with all the arms and heads twisting around the frame while they went in to their dance poses! More often then not, by the time I had positioned them and taken a shot, the models would have moved ever so slightly to a position where the face was in shadow or was covered by another hand. So I had to take several frames quite quickly and I had to keep moving around or moving them around to get the proper shot

2)     As you can see from the pictures, the poses were not the “run of the mill” ones you get in normal portraits. In order to show them in their element, they had to be in certain dance poses which required quite an effort on their part. It was quite difficult for them to stand still when they were half bent or had one leg in the air and I had to take my shots quickly before the moment was lost or one of the dancers moved.

3)     Even though I had read up quite a bit on lighting, it’s altogether a different ball game when it comes to doing it for real!!! The shoot was done at the Hilton Hotel and balancing the lighting in some of the indoor shots was a pretty big challenge. Even trying to get the out door lighting, especially the ones against the sun, were quite difficult.

As stated above lighting was a pretty big challenge and even though I was using a shoot through umbrella and a voice activated light stand (my wife Michelle) it was quite difficult to get some of the shots without hard shadows which I really hated doing.

The final part of the shoot was this particular dancer in a peacock costume. After taking some shots to be used for the promotion, I used a nearby chair to give a bit of a different “fashion shoot” look to the image.

With all the challenges, the whole shoot turned out to be quite fun. Highlight for my wife was when I lay down on the ground near the stairs to try and get a shot with a different view point – she found that quite hilarious. We had a few strange looks from the guests and one of the guests actually wanted to take a shot with the dancers :D We also came across another photographer (together with 3 – yes three – voice activated stands and full bridal retinue) doing a wedding shoot.

Had good fun doing it and it was a good learning experience. 


These and a few other pics of  the shoot can be found here 

Raving at the beach

The original idea was to do a running update of our holiday to Sri Lanka with weekly updates to this blog as well as twitter feeds. Unfortunately, plans are always supposed to go wrong and this was no exception due to the inability to get a PAYG internet connection and our busier than expected schedule.

As soon as she heard we were coming down in July, the first thing that my wife’s cousin did was to beg (yes beg) us to take her to the Hikkaduwa Beach Fesitval. The festival was organised by Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau and was a 4 day event with a Drum Festival on the 1^st night, a Beach rave on the 2^nd and themed parties on the 3^rd and 4^th nights.

So a week after we landed, together with the cousin Natashaaaaaaaaaa, and our dear friend Damith, we made our way to the south of the Island to the tourist beach paradise that is Hikkaduwa. Needless to say we had many adventures – the 1^st of which was trying to find accommodation. Natasha, in her brilliantly organised way, had arranged for 2 rooms in 2 different hotels and that had to be changed for the 2 nights we were going to be there. Confused? So were we. After much discussion with hotel staff, numerous calls to Natasha’s “friends” and a few trips up and down between hotels, we were able to secure 2 rooms, next to each other, in the same hotel for both the nights (better?).

Natasha and Michelle

After settling down in our rooms and relaxing with a drink, we set out in the evening to take a walk on the beach before went on to the Drum Festival. It had been quite a while since Mich and myself had walked on soft beach sand and we found it quite relaxing. Half way through the walk, we realised we were hungry and decided to take Natasha’s advise to sample some “Chicken Rotti” which was supposed to be a speciality down there with one particular shop doing a really tasty dish. According to Natasha, the way to find the shop was to look out for a board which said “Chicken Rotti” on the side – unfortunately, every shop we looked into had a board like this and after a bit of a walk we settled on a way side shop with a friendly enough shop owner. However, we fell in to the much dreaded “tourist” trap – we went in, ordered and had eaten without checking the price first – big mistake. We ended up paying a relatively big amount for something that really didn’t taste all that good and could have got for a fraction of the cost in Colombo.

After the meal we headed back to the beach to catch the sunset. I had wanted to photograph a proper sunset for a long time and I struggled a bit with setting up the tripod to the angle that I wanted. I also took my time to check the shots, use ND filters and even position a branch I found on the beach to a pleasing angle. All this preparation was a cause of great amusement and laughter for the others – including my wife – who were joking about the time that I took to take a simple sunset shot and that all the camera equipment I was carrying was actually a burden if I was going to take so long to take a shot. Well, all I can say is good photography takes time and now that the result is posted below, they can all eat their words!! Ha!

The Drum Festival, which started 1½ hours later than scheduled, had its ups and downs. We were quite excited about one particular group (can't remember their name) who we had seen live before and considered them to be quite good. They were one of the first to play. They are quite a young group and they quickly got the crowd on their feet with some excellent rhythmic beats.

This guy is the leader (I think) and is extremely talented 

Here are a couple of videos of them performing – image quality is not great but the sound should give you an idea of what they are capable of

After they finished, the night went in to a slow decline in terms of entertainment. After such a high octane performance, the last thing we expected was a traditional drum performance. These guys were accompanied by dancers wearing traditional masks depicting devils and though entertaining, was inherently slow and down beat.

We were also treated to some "Brazillian Dancing" by some dancers brought in from the UK, which got the crowd going for obvious reasons. 

(Picture by Damith de Silva)

Several other drum groups performed and some of them were good, but none of them could get us or the crowd as excited as the first group did.

One of the drummer really got in to the "swing".... 

To make matters worse, the heavens opened up and we were treated to a nice shower at which point we realised that the organisers had not arranged for any shelter even though rain was forecasted for the day. I had to protect the camera so had to squeeze in to a tiny space near the stage to get out of the rain whilst the others held the chairs over their heads!!! As soon as the rain passed and we settled back in to our seats, we had a power outage – most probably because of all that water on the equipment – which made us realise that the organisers had not actually “organised” anything properly. They actually had a big sign to say the event was “child friendly” but we had to question why a “child friendly” event would not any kind of shelter so that at least the children don’t get soaked in the rain!!! The last straw was when we were treated to a fireworks show with the fireworks being shot over the crowd. Admittedly, the effect was great but this meant that the burnt out fireworks were going to fall on to the crowd. We had quite a few of the people scrambling and screaming as the fireworks fell on them and one of them actually fell on Michelle’s arm and left a burn mark visible to this day. If this event was held in the UK, the organisers would have been sued for Health & Safety violations….

Another funny incident involved the writer himself (yes, moi) – after the drink at the hotel, the long walk, dodgy food, running around a beach to avoid the rain, having ears and head constantly assaulted by the heavy and loud drum beats, I was suddenly feeling woozy and faintish. I had to take a break and we went back to the hotel to take a shower and then hit the beach again to hear some of the DJ music. We finally got some sleep at about 5am.

The next day we got up at about 9:30, had breakfast and then headed out to Unawatuna Beach – a surfers and sunbathers paradise. The sea is great for bathing here as it is quite shallow but there are quite a lot waves which meant that the surfers were out in force

 

It was great to be just sitting around, doing nothing but look at the sea, having good food and a nice cool drink (makes we want to cry as I think of it now….).

Dam the man

 

Yours truly - all cool and dapper

(Picture by Damith de Silva)

Michelle - finding it amusing being photographed

Quite a lot happened during the time we were there – a few of the guys showed off their football dribbling skills, a newly wedded couple came on to the beach for some photographs (Damith took some nice shots of them but will avoid posting here so as not to infuriate the official photographer), Damith asked for and took a picture of a very “colourful” couple, a few cute dogs ran around doing funny things which got Michelle to run around with the camera.

Damith with football dribblers in the background 

A sweet couple - our only regret being not getting their email address so that we could have sent this pic 

(Picture by Damith de Silva)

On our way back we decided to stop over at the Galle Fort – which was first built in the 17^th Century and is still standing even after 400 years of existence and a devastating tsunami in 2004.

The Lighthouse at Galle Fort 

The clouds were rolling in and it looked like it was going to pour but there were patches of sunlight through the clouds, when I took this shot.

 

But the cloud passed and the sea was starting to get rough, with some of the waves crashing on these rocks with quite a bit of force

 

And just before we left, I tried to do some off camera flash shooting of the 2 ladies. Again they were very amused about the time it took for me to balance the ambient and flash to get the shot but hey – results speak for themselves :D

 

That night we went for the Beach Rave at Hikkaduwa. It was a bit confusing for us cos it looked as if we had stepped right in to a nightclub at Brighton (UK). The reason was because the DJs were all from UK and they were playing typical trance/techno music – and the thing that confused us was that the Sri Lankan crowd normally doesn’t like such music. Most of the nightclubs play pop/dance music as that is what is popular with the crowds. This was apparent because after a couple hours the heavy crowd that was at the main stage started moving towards the rear towards the Dialog (one of the sponsors) stall, which was playing more popular dance music. By the time we left, at about 3am, there were more people near the Dialog stall than the main stage.

 

(Picture by Damith de Silva)

Damith had a great time running with the camera photographing all the women – they thought he was the official event photographer (with the 40D and flash attached) and were quite keen on posing for him. He also found some very interesting characters in the crowd.

 

(Picture by Damith de Silva)

We also spent most of the night screaming out Natasha’s name (Natashhhaaaaaaaa) every time the music stopped – I think most of  the crowd thought that we were shouting the DJ’s name and were looking out for "DJ Natasha". Or maybe they just thought we were weird.

We had to leave the next day as Natasha had to get back to Colombo so we missed out on the theme nights. The journey back was quite interesting as well cos we had to locate one of Natasha’s friends who was unable to give any form of directions or landmarks as to where he was and then 5 people squeezed into a tiny car for a 3 hour journey!!

Overall a great time – thanks Natasha and Damith!

Birthday

Well... it has been a long time coming... but better late than never.

Even though my birthday was on the 12^th of July, I haven’t had time to do a write up on it all this time. No time because of our 5 week holiday to Sri Lanka and then taking time settle down once we came back. Plenty more to write on with details on our holiday, wildlife safaris, photo shoots and book reviews – so watch this space.

My wife usually goes overboard with my birthday celebrations and this year was no exception. When she asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I told her that all I wanted was a peaceful, relaxing day. Simple enough, right? But noooooo.... she can’t leave it just at that. I was sent out early in the morning on a ridiculous errand during which time she setup the surprise. I came back to find that she had made some fantastic stuff for lunch, baked a cake and got me some great gifts. I thought it might be difficult to top last year but she outdid herself again.

Lamb chops and salad..... yummmmmmm

Seafood Paella...... absolutely delicious

Stuffed my stomach silly....

Dessert – The Ultimate Chocolate Cake... really that’s what its called that! Just divine!

The birthday candle – Scooby Dooby Doooooooooo!

This is a wonderful gift – a photo book of all my favourite pictures from my 365 project. Brilliant!

Some photography books.... remember those book reviews I mentioned?

And finally, this is how much I liked the cake....

Needless to say, I had a fantastic time and great birthday. So, thank you, my love, for making my birthday special... you, of course, are the best.

Can’t wait for next year....

Wildfowl and Wetlands

That might sound a strange title to anyone not familiar with the London WWT (Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust). In case you have never heard of it, the London WWT is a 42 hectare site located on the banks of the River Thames and is home to rare and beautiful wildlife with several hides and viewing observatories. We had been wanting to visit it for some time so when the sun came out (quite surprisingly) on a Sunday in late May, we decided to give it a go.

It was quite an enjoyable day. The WWT is pretty well organised and well laid out with pathways and signposts. In addition to a number of birds and insects, there are several interesting "sculptures" made out of recycled materials which we found quite amusing.

Fishing and biking

Steely bird watcher

There were a couple of these herons in different parts of the wetlands. They were not moving at all and were so still that many of the visitors thought they were sculptures/statues. Normally they would be like this when hunting for fish but this was not the case here - they just stood stock still without moving for long periods of time - very eerie.

Lots of flowers especially daisies. I tried to get some good bokeh and backgrounds - came out nicely I thought :)

Standing out in a crowd

Daisy is all alone

Shining Light

Saw several damselflies and dragonflies but had a lot of trouble trying to get them in focus. They were flutttering about too much. You need a lot of patience or skill (I lack both) to get a proper shot of these guys

Strangely, not many butterflies though. I would have expected much more than the 2 or 3 that we saw.

Finally, this is a shot of some moss/plant growing the roof of a hide - do you see what I see? Hint: "Proposal?"

For a quite and relaxing day out, especially for taking some nice shots and practicing your photography skills, the London WWT is an ideal place to go to. Highly recommended.