The Rock

He saw the rhythms and patterns in all beings and inanimate objects as parts of a connected web of infinity. He promised the comfort of permanence through his odes of impermanence in nature, in us, and in the infinity of this universe. Much of his seemingly endless amount of poetry is about finding limitlessness in the ephemeral rhythms and patterns we experience everyday. His work instruments a unique way of mindfully observing existence, moment by moment, and identifying it as part of a calm and comforting eternity. This page contains a few of Gurudeb Rabindra Nath Tagore’s songs. The audio is overlaid with some of my images and footages that captured emotions evoked in me while listening to those songs.

They came long before we did. Learnt how to feed the world by capturing energy from photons. And all that while enchanting us with their magical friendship with the butterflies and birds and the blue sky with pelican-white cloud. The images on this page are about those Green Sages.

An image is painted with photons that originate in our star's core before spending 100,000 years to reach its surface. After another eight-minute voyage, the photons illuminate an object on the Earth and reflect. Then they enter an imaging device through its glass and hit the sensor to paint the image. The image then goes through millions of processing cycles in a camera's processor and the photographer's development machine to render what we finally see. That is the story of photons! Images on this page are about the creator of those photons that bathe our planet every morning.

Over four billion years, our rock's geology transformed its gift from the comets into limitless oceans with waves of surreal beauty. Seeing a wave's ephemerality and its vigor to embrace everything in its way always reminds me of uninhibited expressions of intense human emotions. Yet, those waves are oblivious to our presence and existed every moment since water was gifted to the planet. The videos in this page were aerially shot along the Pacific coasts of the United States.

All major languages relied on our moon as a metaphor to create odes of dream, love, and softness. Its liquid yellow-whiteness covers oceans and mountains while mellowing human emotions into expressions. The cycles and phases of this rock had provided cultural references and influences for human societies throughout history. Its influences can be found in language, calendar systems, art, and mythology. Moon also majorly influences our climate by stabilizing Earth’s axial tilt, which is responsible for the seasons. Without moon, climatic extremes caused by seasonal irregularities may have prevented life from evolving on this planet. From a distance of quarter of a million miles, moon also contributes to our oceans’ tidal cycle, which transports heat around different parts of world’s oceans and impacts evolution and speciation of life. The satellite is receding from us about 1.5 inches every year, making the days and nights increasingly longer by slowing down Earth’s spin. This page contains a few images of our Dreamers Rock!

After thirteen billion years since coming into existence, and going through many stellar cycles, the particles in our cosmos create those completely random, yet stunningly beautiful moments. They are always there. They just wait for us to be awake and to be witnessed! The images on this page are a few that I chanced upon!

At certain point in evolution, neurons showed up. Along came the unbelievable abilities to believe, love, cry, and empathize with other neuron owners. This was a turning point for our planet. While silently nurturing them, it became a hostage of those neurowners somewhere along the way. The images on this page are about those neurowners.

When the snowflakes give in to Earth’s gravity and start covering its surface with their soft unique ice crystals, the planet transitions into a monochromatic wonderland. Immersed into a meditative silence created by snowflakes soaking up the rustling sound of lonely winter leaves, and the creaking noise of the yearning branches of hibernating trees. Nature renders an image of its past ice ages, and what is to come for the Universe after its inevitable heat death in a distant future. It reminds, water exists only as ice everywhere in the Universe except on this precious moist rock. The landscape in monochrome magically blends one’s senses of impermanence and eternity together into the present moment of one’s existence.

A river’s incessant flow, ethereal beauty, and unconditional support for life had endowed it with a rich metaphorical place in literature. River’s flow is often likened with time due to its irreversibility and a sagely indifference it exudes towards everything around. On an overcast late summer afternoon, while hiking by the river Huron, I chanced upon an abrupt transformation of the river within a short stretch of only a few hundred feet. While flowing in a gentle meditative mood, young Huron suddenly finds herself in the embrace of a group of feral rocks and pebbles. She responds with the passion of her fierce current and wild rapids around the lush green offsprings of a fertile summer. The result was a beautiful display of courtship between a seductive wild river and the world around her. I was able to capture a few of those moments and put together an edit with one of my all time favorite cello pieces - The River Cam.

While wandering through the woods and wetlands and lake shores, I often think about how the other creatures would view what I am witnessing. When a beautiful moment in nature makes us, the humans, merge into it, how does it appear to the birds, squirrels, serpents, insects, and their likes. Even if our science would understand the neurochemistry of their brain during those moments, we may never know the experiential parts of it. These thoughts often lead me to anthropomorphize their perspectives by orienting the camera in angles that are close to their viewpoints. Sometimes, the perspective in an old footage can also appear to be anthropomorphized, when looked through the filter of those thoughts. This page captures a few instances of such perspectives.