Photography

World Photography Day 2016

19 August 2016 By Avinash Meetoo Leave a Comment

Today is the World Photography DayÂ and, initially, we wanted to select our best photos which we had been making over the past twenty years now. We quickly realised that this would be too difficult for us to do so, just for the fun, here are a few photos of our little family over the years. Featuring Kyan, Anya, Christina and Avinash:

2007: In a tuk-tuk in Thailand.

2008: On Avinash’s 35th birthday

2009: At PÃ©reybÃ¨re Beach.

2010: Going bananas at Mont Choisy.

2011: At Universal Studios in Los Angeles, USA.

2012: Celebrating another birthday.

2013: Sous le signe Indien.

2014: A collective hug.

2015: Raksha Bhandan.

2015: Having dinner together.

2016: Discovering the Martello Tower.

Independence Day in Mauritius

12 March 2016 By Christina & Avinash Meetoo 1 Comment

There is something I have noticed lately: most Mauritians do not care about the Champ de Mars independence day celebrations. This is in stark contrast with people from other nations such as France, the USA and India who put a lot of emphasis on properly celebrating their national day.

The only thing I can conclude is that Mauritius is not a nation yet despite our hymn (as one people, as one nation).

If you think about it, this is perfectly normal: a nation designates larger groups or collectives of people with common characteristics attributed to them.

Up to now, politicians have not managed to propose common characteristics that we could share and adhere to.

According to this definition, we are not a nation yet.

Flickr is a social network of people who like photography

7 February 2016 By Avinash Meetoo 9 Comments

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I started using Flickr to share my photos more than then years ago.

Flickr has brought me a lot of joy as, 11 years after, I have uploaded 16,165 photos which have been viewedÂ 1,463,578 times in all (for an average of more than 90 views per photo which is not bad). Most of the viewers are members of my extended family and I thank them for that, even though only a few of them leave comments (most probably because they do not have an account on Flickr).

Yesterday, while browsing the Flickr website, I stumbled upon Flickr groups and this sentence caught my attention: “Flickr groups are a great way to share photos, post comments, and hold discussions around a common theme.” Of course, I knew that Flickr was a great social network for photographers but, up to now, I had neglected that part. So, I subscribed toÂ some groups which I felt were interesting, both because of the quality of photo submissions but, first and foremost, because of the community of photographers participating and their level of interaction. Here are the groups I haveÂ subscribed to:

Canon DSLR User Group (because I have a Canon EOS 60D camera)
The Portrait Group (because most of my photos are portraits of family members, especially my wife, Christina, and my two kids, Anya and Kyan)
Nature (because I live in Mauritius!)
Landscape (same as above — because I live in Mauritius!)
B&W (because of the inherent beauty of black and white photos)
Macro (because this is something I would like to be able to do)
Strobist (because I would like to perfect my off-camera flash technique)
Night Images (because cameras have great high ISO performance now)

My intention is, initially, to visit those groups regularly in order to understand how they work, then start submitting some of my photos to them so that other photographers can offer constructive criticism. My intention is do discover like-minded people, talk with them, learn from them and, ultimately, become a better photographer.

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