Friday, November 29, 2013

Atlantic Waves Wave Cold Farewell To Winter's Day - IMRAN™

There is nothing quite like the majestic serenity of a winter’s day at a secluded spot on the ocean, with not a soul in sight for miles.

The sounds of a silent soul soaking in the scene, felt, though not heard, louder than the crashing of the waves giving up the fight against gravity and the combined strength of otherwise insignificant grains of sand making their stand.

The cold onslaught of the mighty ocean merely hoping to erase recent footsteps of a man’s walk on the beach.

The surf, rolling, thundering in, and then haplessly collapsing foaming, seething, bubbling, hissing before receding, to gather strength for its next return, knowing it has no choice, but to dance this eternal dance, until the end of time.

The Atlantic Ocean’s wave’s wave a cold farewell to a New York winter’s day and ominous clouds, with the promise that they will tango again.

© 2013 IMRAN
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Thursday, November 28, 2013

Fifty Thousand Shades Of Grey - IMRAN™

Life is not black and white. It is full of a million shades of grey.

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It has its ups and downs. We probably have between 50,000 and 70,000 hours available in life.

If Black is down and White is the up part of our lives, it is in the grey zone that we will live most of our days and hours.So mope not if you happen to hit a down period in your life. And gloat not if you happen to hit a high. 

Give thanks, instead, for having the 50,000 hours of grey. Be thankful that they are not black and dark. Be grateful they are in your power to make lighter, brighter, whiter, happier, more blessed.

Be proactive, make a choice, and do all you can that God empowered you with, to make them more delightful, more love filled, more full of smiles, more brimming with love. And yes, don’t take for granted the basics. 

Say a prayer of gratitude for being alive, healthy, loved, able to read with your own eyes, able to write or speak your thoughts, having the resources and ability to go online.

Bow your head to count the blessings, of having a bed to sleep in and food to eat, and being able to do many of things a billion or more on this earth cannot do.

Happy Thanksgiving, in every shade of grey. 

- Imran Anwar
Long Island, NY, November 2013

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Fall Full Moon Falls As Sun Rises To Keep It At Bay At Tampa Bay - IMRAN™

I had happened to pull an all-nighter in Florida to finish work on a project before catching an early flight to NY.

But just as the sun was rising behind me, I saw a beautiful fall full moon still clearly shining in the sky falling to the West over Tampa Bay.

This photo was taken with a 41MP Windows Phone Nokia Lumia 1020 cell phone. It is a great camera but one thing it does is try to lighten dark photos. That is great for indoor dark scenes but in this case it tried to “help” by making the scene lighter, easier to see, but taking away the rich tones I was seeing.

I enhanced the photo by darkening it back in Photoshop to bring it closer to what I saw that day…. “Fall Full Moon Falls As Sun Rises To Keep It At Bay At Tampa Bay”.

© 2013 IMRAN

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Sunday, November 24, 2013

Stunning November Afternoon Glows With Orlando Magic - IMRAN™

Even though Orlando is far from my favorite bodies of water, like Tampa Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, the landscaping in most resorts makes up for that with ample water surrounding everything.

This particular November afternoon on a Hilton Grand Vacations resort was a splendid display of the power of nature’s colors in Florida, with a touch of Orlando Magic.

This photo was taken with my WindowsPhone Lumia1020, imported into iPhoto, enhacned in Photoshop, with copyright insertion, and reimported into iPhoto to post on Flickr.

© IMRAN WP1020_20131108_15_41_22_Pro__highres

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Smith Point Beach Fire Island Dance Party



During one of my drives to Smith Point Beach on Fire Island I saw this fun group of people enjoying  summer dancing with live music at the Beach Hut. Except for a few songs, I am not a big fan of country music, but this tune obviously had people enjoying the day like a weekend, even though it was a Monday.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Pollen, Petals, And Cell(ular Phone Camera) Biology - IMRAN™

This is a handheld photo taken at maximum zoom of the Nokia, WindowsPhone, Lumia 1020 at my home on Long Island New York this summer.

It is amazing to see the detail of pollen on the petals that a 41MP cell phone camera’s zoom (crop to merely 1.5MB) picture can show.

I Imported into iPhoto, enhanced with copyright insertion in Photoshop, and shared with you all.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Air, Land & Sky That Even Poseidon Would Love - IMRAN™

1989 was my first full year of living in the United States (after first coming in 1987). And at the end of that year, during a visit to Miami, Florida, where I made many wonderful friends, it was Susane Ronai, a dear friend until years afterwards, who took me to Disney in Orlando for New Year’s.

Even though I came to Orlando many times in subsequent years, for meetings, to speak at conferences like HIMMS, and more, I never made it back to a Florida theme park. I did go to Universal Studios in Los Angeles, and to Six Flags in New Jersey, both in 1991.

This year, I finally made it back to a theme partk after nearly 22 years, with my beautiful girlfriend Kat. It ended up being Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure, in Orlando, that we spent November 10, 2013, at.

The more than 10 miles of walking we got in was quite a lot, especially wearing new shoes without socks. LOL. But the Hulk roller coaster (that I took twice), and the tower where you are shot up at the same acceleration as a fighter jet being catapulted off an aircraft carrier, were definitely worth experiencing (again).

I had to miss the Poseidon experience because it was a stunning day and I wanted to capture a panorama (actually an auto stitch with the Microsoft Photosynth app in my Lumia 1020 41MP phone). Not using a tripod means less than perfect alignment, but in this case Photosynth did a decent job. I cropped the full 360x360 degree spherical view into a rectangular photo for you to enjoy.

Feel free to post the link on your FaceBook or Twitter feeds if you have been to this place, and share your stories here.

Thursday, November 07, 2013

My Blessed Heavenly Home By The Sea - IMRAN™

This is a panorama photo of my blessed home in Florida, the white home to the right. You have to click to soak in the scene larger size on a monitor. It was taken while standing in the water of Tampa Bay at my beach as the tide was receding.

Having slept at 4AM or so, I was woken by my girlfriend who had gone for a walk on the beach and realized the stunning Florida sky colors, sand flats color and the water shades would be worth waking me up for.

Normally waking me up from deep sleep is a serious offense (LOL), but in this case I just jumped out of bed and walked on to the sands with her.

I took 22 handheld Nikon D300 images facing the morning sun. It was a breathtaking moment as the sun behind the home gave it a heavenly aura.

Later back inside on my brand new MacBook Pro Adobe Photoshop and other apps could not handle stitching them straight but in a wave shape, but they were stitched by Microsoft’s ICE program on Windows 8, running in Parallels. But even that skipped 2 shots, as it seems beach/water/horizon/sky are the weakest parts of panorama software and those happen to be my favorite subjects. Oh well, this will do for now.

I opened that stitched image in Photoshop CC/CS to fill out the jagged edges (Fill/Content Aware), improved shadow detail, but did not reduce sun glare which would make the sky color seem fake, so I just added my name, exported as JPG and imported into iPhoto to post on Flickr.

I hope you enjoy this moment as much I did and do. Your prayers to bless my family, me and my homes are always requested.

© 2013 IMRAN