It is no secret that I have a soft corner for elephants and monkeys.. especially elephants.
Here is one of the pictures of the elephants in San Diego Zoo..
Loved processing this one into a Black and White image and retain the color only on the leaves he was eating. Had done a similar picture years ago where only the eyes had color . . .
More pictures tomorrow..
I had all but forgotten about the zoo pictures from the New Year's eve trip to San Diego. Things catch up and before you know it, the photoblog series came to an abrupt end.. or blogging for that matter.
Was not feeling well last two days but made up for some quiet time this afternoon with photo editing. Here, are the birds that posed.
Majesty even in captivity!
This guy was posing for portraits!
Almost all the shots here were taken with the 70-200.. some with the now working extender at 400mm.
This one is not a bird but rather the tail feathers.. the bird kept sticking its head into the feathers. Waited for almost 5 mintues but had to move on with the group..
it was one long feather.. at least 30 inches long and absolutely gorgeous.
The Kookaburra is one shy bird. This one kept shuffling around. Was glad to catch the colors on the tail feathers.
when it came to "color" , this one takes first place!
This one is a close second..
THis is the first time we saw a secretary bird in a zoo. They could have done a better enclosure for this one instead of a thin long strip facing the road. A bird this beautiful deserves to be free. . or at least a better enclosure.
Last but not least, a dove that came and posed for me. This is my favorite picture of the entire bird set.
On to other beautiful creatures, big and small tomorrow..
It is 60 day challenge time at Bikram Yoga. So I go whenever I can. My timetable is all over the place. Started a day with Yoga at 5:30AM, so I could come home just in time to wake up the little one and drop Jr. in school. After what was a very very long day at work, thought I would end the day with yoga as well by going to the 8:30 PM class. My plan was flawed as I ended up working till midnight. But that is not the topic of the post.
Got to the hot room and was pleasantly surprised to see the noise level in the room being high, a good ten minutes before class. Usually folks are very quiet in the room and if they have to talk to someone, they talk in hushed tones.
Turned out that someone had invited a whole bunch of their unsuspecting friends to come do Bikram Yoga for the first time. There were group pictures prior to the class and a lot of smiling and giggling and I was thinking "these people have no idea what they have signed up for! this is going to be an interesting class".
Five minutes into class, a few more folks rolled in and they were all first timers. It was definitely going to be an interesting class.
The group was not particularly receptive to the teachers instructions. Refusal to give up chewing gum, taking pictures with cell phone when the teacher was not looking, talking, random walking around the mat, drinking water while others were trying to balance on one leg, and the list goes on. It was like they were checking off an endless list of "don'ts" on the Yoga etiquette printout that we used to get as beginner students. Then a few people started leaving the room, 30 minutes into class.The teacher did her best to stop them and make them just stay on the mat, but they did not listen to her.
Something snapped and I got mad for a few seconds. Then I looked at the teacher who came back to the podium from the back of the class. She had a very determined look on her face, to make sure the rest of the students gave it everything they got. It was like watching world class management in action. It is easy to have a bunch of students who are all responding to your dialogue. It is not easy when there is a walkout of sorts going on. With amazing grace, she kept the class going and pushed everyone to do their best.
When I saw her take her two deep breaths and go "this is very unusual for a Bikram Yoga class. You guys, focus on yourself in the mirror", something changed. I went into "look only at yourself, look only at yourself" mode. Got tunnel vision at my reflection and that changed the class entirely!
It was like I was alone with myself and everything else disappeared. This was a very unusual experience. My eyes went "bokeh" on the background ! Didn't think that was even possible.
Usually I am beat at 8:30 in the evening after a long day that started before 5AM, but there was a steely determination to do my best, lead by example, not let down a teacher who was giving it everything, and most of all, do the right thing by myself and work as hard as I could after having made it into the room.
After class, I told the teacher "you really inspired me today, the way you handled the class and kept going" and she smiled and said
"well, they were all your teachers Sundar. they taught you the importance of focusing on yourself".
and that was so true!
Every day we learn things, in the most unexpected ways.
Copyright © 2012, Sundar Narayanan. All rights reserved.