Art from Chitra Santhe...

Tomorrow, the 31st of January, 2010 is Chitra Santhe~ Art for all.

The one-day art event organized by Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath every year on Kumara Krupa Road.

This event showcases artists, painters & sculptors from all over India and where people can pick up art at a very affordable price.

Today, I want to share with all of you the unique pieces of art bought from very talented artists during the last few years that we have been visiting Chitra Santhe.

Watercolours by M.G. Hegde from Bijapur.

Mixed Media folk art from a young artist from Shimoga.

Madhubani paintings by a folk artist. Ardha-narishwar & Goddess Kali (still waiting to be framed;-)

The two acrylic on canvas by Vishwas. M. picked up at last year's Chitra Santhe.

This is a lovely sketch made on old magazine sheets by Mr. M.U Raja

For more details on the event, do visit http://chitrasanthe.com/index.html

If you are in Bangalore tomorrow, do drop by this very colourful event:-)

(images by Arch)

Thank You BlogAdda!

Thank you Harish Krishnan and his team at BlogAdda.com { the largest community of Indian bloggers } for the interview about Rang Decor.

Zion: Angel's Landing and More....

After our fun little cabin adventure at the Grand Canyon we made our way over to Zion. I kind of wanted to go see Bryce but it was 18 degrees there at night, so we opted to stay warm. Last year i mentioned that i never did anything in the main canyon of Zion during my week long stay at the park, so this time, since Maree had never been to the park at all, i decided to spend the majority of my time there, where most of the official trails are.

We wanted to go to the Narrows, but the cold front that came through made that undesirable. Our first excursion into the water, to a hidden oasis i knew about, was frigid. So i took Maree up to the famous Angel's Landing, a 2,000 foot monument in the middle of the canyon.

Once again, i was shocked at how many people visit the park now. The trail was totally packed, and up near the top, where you need to hang on to chains for safety on the extemely exposed trail, we found ourselves waiting for minutes at a time as endless caravans of visitors came down from the top.

There are a lot of switchbacks up the Angels Landing trail.

Although the total height didn't seem as impressive to me after the years of other experiences i've had, the trail does still offer a frightening amount of exposure that is amplifed by loose sand on the rounded, sloped rocks. I have to admit i was a bit scared. In fact, i was shocked to be more afraid now than i used to be, which was bizarre (since i just mentioned the total height being less impressive than i remember). Maybe it was the high winds.


Maree is getting scared right when things start to get fun.

Maree, on the other hand, was frightened to death. It was too bad because she became paralyzed just a short distance from the top, and could go no further. Once someone experiences a paralyzing fear like that there isn't much you can do to talk them out of it, so i let her sit on a narrow bench of rock while i made a quick trip up to the top. At least in this instance she thought i came back much sooner than she had expected.


The view on the top looking down at the road and the Virgin River 2,000 ft below.

The next day the winds became so strong that rangers advised people not to go on the Angels Landing trail at all, and with all the sand in the air we decided to go for a drive instead of walking in the high cliffs. But we did do one other hike before leaving directly across the river from Angels Landing. Maree enjoyed Hidden Canyon, even wandering far up canyon, off trail while i went to find the way to nearby Echo Canyon.


This is where Maree could go no farther. You can see how scared she is, poor girl...

We saw California Condor Number 57. I never thought i would see a Condor!


And we saw one of these!

 












This is the piece of land i want.


I also used that day to test out a new lense. I had rented a Canon 17mm TSE lense. It's a tilt shift lense, which means it can correct for parallax like a field camera. I'd been excited about the possibilities of the lense, but the huge price tag made renting one for a week seem like a good idea. I picked it up from Las Vegas on the way out of town, and played with it a bit in our cabin, but hadn't used it since then because it was so heavy and cumbersome. Eventually i decided that the only way i could force myself to really use it was to make sure that it was the only lense i had available, so i left my others in the room that day.

This image shows how you can use the lense to make those popular "miniaturized" pictures of just about anything. It's fun. 


This image shows what you can do when the lense is used correctly. Notice that the long narrow slot canyon on the far right of the photo is nice and verticle all the way up and down the photo. This would be very distorted on a normal wide angle lense. For a 17mm lense that is impressive.

The lense has a HUGE crystal ball attached to the front of it. It looks very cool, to be honest, but there is so much glass that it seems it would be impossible for the thing to take a crisp image without any distortion. The results are exactly the opposite. It has virtually no chromatic aberration, and it is extremely sharp, if you focus it right. It's manual focus only, and i had a lot of difficulty getting the plane of focus to line up with the scenes i wanted. By the very end of the day i was finally starting to get some better results, and those are posted here.

The two images above may look the same at first glance. The top one is taken using the lense with no tilt corrections, and the bottom using the maximum tilt that the lense will allow. It may be easier to notice the cliffs and trees on the left look slightly "straighter", while the mountaintop on the top picture has been very stretched out on the right side due to the wide angle. The difference is so subtle that i don't think it is worth the price tag. The camera wasn't moved during the two shots.




We found this bridge that had been destroyed by a HUGE flash flood at some point.

Havelis of Shekhawati, Rajasthan.

The Sonthaliya Gate, Mandawa.

When we decided on our winter vacation destination as Rajasthan, we immediately knew it had to be in the lesser explored regions of Shekhawati. Shekhawati region is known for their heritage Havelis.

Haveli- Is a huge private mansion in India or Pakistan.

The Rajasthani havelis were constructed by the wealthy Marwari community in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan in the 19th century. A haveli typically has two courtyards one for the men and the inner one for the women, the walls were adorned with beautiful colourful frescoes painted by commissioned artists.

The themes were usually images of Gods, Goddesses & animals.

Mandawa, Ramgarh, Fatehpur are dusty little towns in the Shekhawati area that have many old havelis, which in their glorious days would have been a treat to the eyes, but even today have not lost their timeless beauty.

The huge old havelis in Mandawa.

A handful of these havelis are being restored and given a new lease of life by private organizations, historians & architects. Some of them have been converted into heritage hotels.

Nadine Le Prince is a french artist whose love for Indian cultural heritage has inspired her to restore a haveli built in 1802 by a rich tradesman of the silk road.

Beautifully restored courtyard at Nadine Le Prince Haveli Cultural Centre, Fatehpur.

Ramgarh Fresco, a restored haveli, earlier known as the Khemka Haveli is 100-years old and has been renovated by the Khandelwal family who wanted to showcase the beauty of the frescos and the architecture to the visitors.

Amazing hand-painted frescos at Hotel Ramgarh Fresco

We had a lovely thali lunch here:-)

The traditional haveli courtyard.

In my next post, will showcase another restored haveli~ A lovely place where we stayed, soaked in the winter sun and listened to the folk music of the desert...:-)

( Images by Arch)

A Tale of Two Rooms

Maree had never been to Utah so this fall i took her to Zion. We also decided to spend a couple of nights in Vegas. I personally wouldn't mind if Las Vegas was wiped from the face of the earth (although i do like the location of the airport) but Maree wanted to go there so i dutifully showed her around.

We went to the Hoover Dam and took a tour. I didn't know that there is a huge bridge being built over the river as part of a much needed bypass of the dam. Construction had just been completed on the arch, and when finished it's supposed to be the 4th highest span in the world.


Looking South at the smoke of distant fires near Flagstaff.


From Vegas we went to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Maree hadn't seen that either (she really hasn't seen the Colorado Pleateau at all), and although i worked on the South Rim many years ago, i only visited the North Rim for one day in all that time.

I really like the North Rim. It's much more peaceful, far less crowded, and higher than the opposite side. It took a long time to get there and we were not looking forward to a twisty, nightime drive to Kanab. It was already close to sunset, so i asked if a room was available on the rim and, amazingly, they had a vacancy! Usually you have to reserve those rooms up to a year in advance.

We had a very old log cabin with holes in the doors that the moonlight would shine through. I was very thankful that the cabins had modern indoor bathrooms. That made all the difference. In our cabins in Glacier Park, you had to walk 50 yards through watever kind of weather was happening in order to get to the bathroom.

Our little log cabin room.


Maree gazes down into the abyss.

Although it was just one night, i had a good time up there on the North Rim. The lodge has a very cool ambience and is built literally on the rim of the canyon. At night you can stand outside by the heat of a huge fireplace and gaze out over the moonlit canyon. The surrounding lanscape is hilly and heavily forested with numerous large subalpine meadows to drive through. Although there are no Antelope as in Bryce, we saw plenty of deer in the evening. They also have a cool, unique species of squirrel (Kaibab Squirrel).


The lobby of the spa was about the only place i could take pictures and feel safe about it.

Days later we returned to Vegas for two nights. I thought that to wrap up our vacation it would be nice to stay someplace "classy", so we stayed at the Wynn Encore, which had just opened up earlier in the year. Our room was huge, as was the bathroom, and as far as casinos go, i haven't been in one that was nicer. Vegas seems to have changed it's gimmick over the last 10 years. Whereas before the city would build a hotel focused on some kind of gimmicky theme, they now seem to be using all that money to simply make places that look damn nice. The new theme must be "you are a high roller, so throw your money away"



Our room at the Wynn Encore was huge.


The water level now is very low at the Hoover Dam. Our guide said Las Vegas will be short on water in 3 years at current levels.


The original generators from the 1930's are still running strong.




In these pictures you can see the newly completed arch for the bypass bridge.


Deep inside the dam are cool secret base tunnels.


This whole area vibrated from the power of the water flowing through these huge pipes in the bottom of the dam.