India

• Thomas Paine.

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Sorry for being absent from flickr for a while, due to some unforeseen complications at work I was forced to take a quick trip back to India. Even though I had plans for extensive photo trips across the country, reality intervened and I had to settle for just one trip.

This is a pano shot I made at Munnar, which translates to three rivers, is a popular hill station in the south western state of Kerala. Its known for tea and spices like cardamom and is also home of the tallest peak in India outside of the Himalayas. This shot was taken close to sunset when the setting sun gave the thick fog a tobacco glow. Thanks for visiting hope everyone likes the shot..

Palace illumination of Mysore Palace, Mysore, Karnataka, India

Brihadisvara Temple, Gangai Konda Cholapuram, Tamil Nadu, India

LARGE View

The Chinese fishing nets (Cheena vala) of Fort Kochi (Fort Cochin) in the City of Kochi (Cochin), in the Indian State of Kerala, are fixed land installations for an unusual form of fishing — shore operated lift nets. Huge mechanical contrivances hold out horizontal nets of 20 m or more across. Each structure is at least 10 m high and comprises a cantilever with an outstretched net suspended over the sea and large stones suspended from ropes as counterweights at the other end. Each installation is operated by a team of up to six fishermen. (Source: Wikipedia)

Hello my Dear Friends, I am back from a short trip to the south of India. Thanks to my friend Raju for arranging all the photographic outings!

Digital Blending of a 30 seconds exposure at f/22 (with ND 400 filter), mixed with two exposures without ND 400 at f/8 (1/500 and 1/2000 seconds).

India Set | Digital Blending Set | Earth - Water - Sky Set

View of Courtesan's Street from Veerabhadra Temple, Hampi, Karnataka, India

Tea Garden Plant in Suryanelli, Taking Jeep from Muunhar to Kolukkumalai Mountain Hut, Munnar, Kerala, India

Vittala Temple, Hampi, Karnataka, India

Taken from the water tower

View from of Arunachaleshwarar Temple from Mount Arunachala, Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, India

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-Winston Churchill.

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This is the Lotus temple, one of the landmark buildings of New Delhi, India. It is a Baha’i House of Worship completed in 1986. Notable for its flowerlike shape, it serves as the Mother Temple of the Indian subcontinent and has become a prominent attraction in the city. The Lotus Temple has won numerous architectural awards and been featured in hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles.

Like all other Baha’i Houses of Worship, the Lotus Temple is open to all regardless of religion, or any other distinction, as emphasized in Baha’i texts. The Baha’i laws emphasize that the spirit of the House of Worship be that it is a gathering place where people of all religions may worship God without denominational restrictions. The Baha’i laws also stipulate that only the holy scriptures of the Baha’i Faith and other religions can be read or chanted inside in any language; while readings and prayers can be set to music by choirs, no musical instruments can be played inside. Furthermore no sermons can be delivered, and there can be no ritualistic ceremonies practiced.

The architect was an Iranian, who now lives in Canada, named Fariborz Sahba. He was approached in 1976 to design it and later oversaw its construction. The structural design was undertaken by the UK firm Flint and Neill. The major part of the funds needed to buy this land was donated by Ardishír Rustampúr of Hyderabad, who gave his entire life savings for this purpose in 1953. A portion of construction budget was saved and used to build a greenhouse to study indigenous plants and flowers that would be appropriate for use on the site.

I first visited this temple in 2005 and was fascinated by both the faith and the incredible simplicity of this building and the rituals associated by them. Finally I had a chance to visit the building and get a shot without the tourists.

Brihadisvara Temple, Gangai Konda Cholapuram, Tamil Nadu, India

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Kailasanathar Temple, Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, India

HDR, Airavatesvara Temple, Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, India

Where Yamuna and Ganga join

Must be viewed LARGE!

Back to my India shots!

Safdarjung's Tomb is a garden tomb in a marble mausoleum in Delhi. It was built in 1754.

5 exposures (shot handheld) Digital Blending. I tried HDR tone-mapping with Photomatix first but the result was totally useless, too much noise, so I decided to manually blend it, which was quite easy to do actually.

India Set | Digital Blending Set

A bridge as basic as can be.

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Remained Church, Destoryed Dhanushkodi, Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, India

Veerabhadra Temple, Hampi, Karnataka, India

Tea Garden Plant in Suryanelli, Jeep Journey from Kolukkumalai Mountain Hut to Munnar, Munnar, Kerala, India

• William Hazlitt.

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I took this short shortly before sunset as we were just coming out of the information center of the Baha’i Lotus temple in New Delhi. The lighting conditions you will find in Delhi these days are not ideal for a photographer, it’s usually very hazy and the sky usually has a thick cloud cover. When I went there I was hoping for a sunset but after spending about an hour while coming out of the information center which was located opposite the entrance to the lotus temple the above scene happened. The clouds opened up for a minute and sun rays burst through lighting up the whole temple nicely. I literally had to run up the stairs to the top of the information center building to take this shot which is basically a 5 shot tone mapped HDR.

Hope you all like it, have a good day and thanks for visiting :)