This blog is now becoming time warped with a mix of past and present events, as I go through old photos from March to September and capture some regular events.
After a three year gap, we did go play Holi in 2023.
It was great to be in a large crowd of strangers enjoying the colors. We had Jr. join us as she was on spring break, if I remember right.
Looking back, we had a great time in Foster city with friends. A large multi ethnic crowd, great DJ, amazing atmosphere.. smiling faces! What more can you ask for?! We could always wish the little one had joined!
That hazy effect is because of the color powder on the iPhone camera!
Love this festival. We live in a post COVID world now, where booster shots are becoming like flu shots.
Hope we get to celebrate Holi this way in the coming years!
This weekend we celebrated Holi in Union city with friends. Many years ago, we made this a local event in a park in Cupertino.. but that was just the 15-18 of our close gathering.. last three years we decided to join a much bigger crowd of a few thousand people and it is a lot more fun!
As usual I get to take pictures of the group and send to everyone. I love editing photos of the happy faces after coming home as much as jumping up and down with colors everywhere!
and then there are the kids.. just amazing.. innocent.. putting colors on themselves and everyone.
I had put some of this on FB already, but given my FB acts up and no one knows what will happen over time, posting some of that in the blog as well.
One thing that is amazing is that playing Holi with strangers or friends and family works the same. San and jr. went into the crowd to meet our friends. As I walked into the crowd with a heavy camera bag on one shoulder and a camera on my hand ( I had to protect the lens from being powdered!!) a kid came running out of nowhere and hit hit head on my lens.. By the time I checked to make sure he was fine, he ran into the crowd. Now I was lost.. trying to stand on tippy toes to see if there was any chance of locating the tallest person in our group.. while doing that a group of strangers asked me if they could put color on me. I said yes and they promptly colored me! Then they shared their colors with me to put it back on them.
At this point I would not have recognized myself anyway and when I finally found our group, they were all giving me the look that said "so, you have already been playing Holi with someone else all this time!" .
Also the group is totally international and inter racial. Probably there were people from every country in the world there.. not to mention pet dogs. Even the dogs were colored and they seemed to be enjoying it!
Some pictures from the celebration..
A picture of the kids taking a selfie.. it is my favorite shot of the entire album.. I would like to see that actual picture. They never smiled like that when posing for me.. but their smiles on the selfie must be priceless!!
Also made a composite of all the recent Holi celebrations.. Missed the little one the last few years. She always ends up with a conflict of sorts on these days. Next year I have begged her to come celebrate with us...
Finally, a video with snippets that were recorded partly with iPhone and partly with the 5D Mark ii... that shows how grand this was!
The bay area is truly an amazing place.. We get to celebrate everything in style!
Happy Holi to everyone! May your life be colorful and bright !!
This year we knew that if we did celebrate, we would go to Foster city for a repeat of last years celebration. This event is very well organized with a nice DJ, great music and a lively crowd. We were not sure if the weather would co-operate. Even though it was raining in Cupertino when we left, it was nice and pleasant in Foster City.
A sea of people celbrating and dancing together to music..
and the colors!
did I say "sea of people" ?
although I pulled off this shot, the idea to make her lie down on the floor full of color was not mine. It was her friend Anika's. Any good photographer should always copy compositional ideas.. with pride!
I have one child that co-operates for photos and another one that does not even show up to the celebration because she is going through a "photo-aversion" phase of life! It was heart breaking for me to miss the little one this Holi. Will wait for her to turn around..
My 5D Mark ii saw its toughest time today in the park, with fine color powder flying everywhere.. some kid threw powder directly into my lens. Still managed a lot of good pictures for the day (some of which will be shared in the events FB page). Spent a good 30 minutes cleaning the camera after coming home. It was a good thing that the 70-200 never even came out of the bag. Took everything with the 24-105mm.
The iPhone never came out, but wanted to try the portrait mode and got this shot in the parking lot.
Not happy with the way it defined the edge to cut portrait. Had a shot with the 5D that Jr. took just before we exit the park..
Used refine edge (to be fair spent 20 minutes on this image) but the end result is way better than the iPhoneX. Apple has to improve on the Refine edge algorithm to get smooth edges for shirts and sharp edges for hair sticking out..
There is no family portrait this year, but there is always next year...
Wishing everyone a happy Holi! May your life be filled with joy and color!
A lot of folks celebrated Holi last weekend. I had just got back from Asia and was very tired, not to mention going through tooth ache. So we were very happy to celebrate Holi this weekend with friends.
Eveyone was colored.. we saw Indians, Chinese, White folks, Hispanic folks, black folks. . . the pets.. and we pulled in the cops to play Holi as well and they were nice and got colored by the kids!
There were a 1000+ people in Foster city and the gang went and had a fun time with colors and jumped around to music from the DJ.
Here are a few pictures that just show how big this was..
and the one shot that made my day of the 200+ taken over two hours..
Happy Holi everyone! May this year bring you a feeling of oneness with everyone around you.. When you are all colored in such hues, you realize what true equality is and happiness is in sharing love!
Today total strangers came and put colors on me and let me put colors on them.. we gave a smile, hugs and wished Happy Holi !!
Holi came and went this year. Given my travels, was glad to be part of a Holi celebration with the gang last weekend. As a kid growing up in Tamil Nadu, there was no Holi. My best memories of student days in Varanasi are of Holi..
Great time with friends, Colors, Baang, the mud bath at the end to wash off colors, a feast, did I already mention baang?!
We did celebrate in style at the local park with dry colors and great food! This year it happened again. We started seeing familiar people show up to our group only to realize there was another larger group planning the delayed Holi in another area of the park. Pretty soon, we merged the groups together for even larger fun as every family in our group knew someone from the other group!
Jr. was at her best and she had a lot of fun with her buddies. This one is probably the best shot from the entire collection of pictures for the day...
Then we did get a family portrait. Yes, the litle one looks plain compared to the rest of us. She had to go to a meeting right after the Holi party and did not want to shower. So we respected her request to "not be Holi'ed"!
All said and done, it is great to have the company of people who can put a smile on your face and make you celebrate with abandon!
Was thinking of IT-BHU all day.. three buddies in the group are my seniors from College and that made it even more special. One thing my college trained me for well? If not Metallurgical engineering, it is to play Holi with style... and to teach our kids how to play Holi!
Wednesday, November 1, 2023 at 10:17PM ;)
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