A glorious sunset at Shoreline Park

Photowalks are usually done on a weekend as its more convenient. However not every weekend bear good weather for landscape shots. So this week, decided randomly to make some time off in the evening on a weekday, soon after work. The venue was chosen. It was Shoreline Park in Mountain view. This park is a lively one even on the weekdays with people sailing on the lake inside the park. It was a cloudy day and it did produce some lovely dramatic skies later on in the day. Some shots from the day follows:

Clustered Grass

Nectar Nabbing

Summer pasteurs

A photographer silhouette

Sailing the waters

Lonely with the seas for company

Admiring the sunset

The dramatic skies

Baker Beach Trip

I work in Sunnyvale. This allows me the rare opportunity to travel every now and then to San Francisco which is about an hour drive from my home. SF as its commonly called is a vibrant city with a lot of culture and history behind it and Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most iconic visited tourist spots in the USA.

This weekend, myself and Abhishek decided to capture some images of the Golden Gate Bridge from the Baker Beach. This was a POV we have not tried before and we ended up trekking our way through a wooded coastline region before reaching our point of interest. The following pictures quickly chronicle this trek and the final picture is the image of the day :)

Public barbacue at Baker beach

The woods alongside the coast torn out by the pacific winds

View from top of the hill

Walkway that leads down into the beach, almost seems magical

The view from the beach

The shot of the day, view from down the rock cliff at the beach

If you have the time it is recommended to try all four sides of the bridge to capture different angles of the bridge.

Baby's day out

The past weekend had the chance to meet up with one of my oldest friends who also happen to live near to where I work these days. I knew about their cute son, so took my gear along to try and capture good images of him. It is no easy task to get kids to pose for pictures and in my opinion, the best way to do it is to capture candid images on the fly while you let the children do their thing. Did a few clicks at home and in a near by park. It was so much fun to see him have a great time running around without being restricted on his strollers.

Tracking the curious eyes...

"Catch me if you can... "

Photowalk to the Zoo

It was probably the harshest and the warmest of days in California in a year. The photo-walk group comprising of myself, Abhishek, Shobit and Chaitanya decided to go to the Oakland Zoo and boy were we in for a surprise. The heat was just mind-numbing. It was not anywhere close to the heats of Hyderabad (India) braced by me before however after a spell of cold days, it surely wasn't a warm day.But I was pleasantly surprised that many others, just like us, had turned up at the zoo with their families to enjoy the sunny day. Wish I could say the same about the animals. The animals were least interested to show their faces in our pictures and was shy, lazy and hidden away in the shades. However managed to click some.

"Ginger" at Oakland Zoo

A heat scream

Rarely seen butterflies

Dirt to beat the heat

"Wanna see me moonwalk ?"

"Heats cooking me from inside out"

Just oiled up to shine

Me, Abhishek and Chaitanya

Well the zoo is well kept and the animals are well fed. Definitely recommend anyone in the bay area to take their kids once to this Zoo.  The kids would have a field day.

As for me, it was more than fun taking pictures and great to hang out with the Bay Area Shutterbugs.

See more of my clicks at www.akhilmenon.com. Thanks for visiting.

Everyone has to start somewhere, sometime...

I have been often told by people close to me that I should encourage the writing ability in me. As opposed to what I think, they believe that perhaps someday, It may actually get better. So as of today, I think I am going to give it a shot.

I am very much a part of the new-age social media services such as Twitter and Tumblr  already. I spend sometime writing technical blogs relating to work at my company blog page also. I vent my creativity through the medium of Photography however sometimes even though the images convey what I see, I am unable to express what I think. I hope that this page would serve this purpose.

Just to summarize whats going to be penned down here - I hope to log some of the matters relating to my photography, purely individual opinions and random thoughts on this blog post. I hope what I write here is able to at least serve as a good read and if worthy, also generate some thought provoking comments from its readers.