{"id":11643,"date":"2016-01-01T01:30:57","date_gmt":"2015-12-31T20:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/?p=11643"},"modified":"2015-12-31T23:46:08","modified_gmt":"2015-12-31T18:16:08","slug":"2015-a-year-in-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/2015-a-year-in-review.html","title":{"rendered":"2015 &#8211; A Year in Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This is really a reflective post on how the year went by and also a summery of a few posts made on this blog during the year. Skip the rants if you please.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Posts on this blog.<\/strong> Much like 2014, I did not\u00a0write much this year. I decided to write only when I felt like, and not for the sake of counting the number of posts in a given time. Occasionally, stories\u00a0were interspersed \u00a0with single-image posts. I am probably going to write a little more frequently in 2016, but not a great deal.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/langza-village-spiti-valley-1.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11645\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-11645\" style=\"margin-left: 10px;\" src=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/langza-village-spiti-valley-1-640x330.jpg\" alt=\"Langza Village, Spiti Valley\" width=\"400\" align=\"right\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/langza-village-spiti-valley-1-640x330.jpg 640w, http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/langza-village-spiti-valley-1-768x396.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/langza-village-spiti-valley-1.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a>Some of the stories I really enjoyed writing were &#8211;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/langza-village-in-spiti-life-above-14000-feet.html\">Langza Village in Spiti \u2013 Life above 14,000 feet<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/camobodia-life-after-khmer-rouge-genocide.html\">Camobodia \u2013 Life After Khmer Rouge Genocide<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/myanmar-pao-people-inle-lake-shan-hills.html\">Myanmar \u2013 PaO people near Inle Lake \u2013 Life off the grid in remote Shan Hills<\/a>\u00a0and<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/witnessing-the-mysteries-of-madhya-pradeshs-jungles.html\">Witnessing the mysteries of Madhya Pradesh\u2019s jungles<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>They weren&#8217;t necessarily the most popular posts, but were in line with the kind of writing I wished to do, leaning towards telling stories rather than documenting or reviewing things (Most popular posts: <a href=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/oyo-rooms-hotel-review.html\">OYO rooms review<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/air-costa-review.html\">Air Costa Review<\/a>). The writing goals for the coming days is to write more for myself and work on immersive stories.<\/p>\n<p>This blog quietly completed ten years in July. I let it pass without talking about it, as I hope to work on a series of posts on the journey of this blog that eventually changed everything that I am. Someday; I am not in a hurry.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/shwethalyaung-buddha-bago.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11648\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-11648\" style=\"margin-left: 10px;\" src=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/shwethalyaung-buddha-bago-640x463.jpg\" alt=\"Shwethalyaung Buddha Bago\" width=\"400\" align=\"right\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/shwethalyaung-buddha-bago-640x463.jpg 640w, http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/shwethalyaung-buddha-bago-768x556.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/shwethalyaung-buddha-bago.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><strong>Travel.<\/strong> When it comes to travelling, I did travel a good deal although I did not explore any new locations. All the journeys were on work, leading very satisfying <a href=\"http:\/\/www.darter.in\/photography-tours\/\">photography tours<\/a>\u00a0through a variety of locations including Myanmar, Cambodia, Spiti Valley, Varanasi, Rajasthan and North-East India. I consciously stayed away from making personal trips, as I am increasingly questioning my style of travel and looking for journeys that have deeper experiences than visit places. I am searching to go on\u00a0journeys that have a deeper meaning, facilitates personal evolution and enrich the life around me. The search will continue, and\u00a0for some time to come, there will be fewer personal journeys.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Photography.<\/strong>\u00a0It is more than a decade since I have taken photography seriously. Finally, in 2015, I am beginning to feel that my travel photography is becoming effortless. I shot very little, but\u00a0found more of those images acceptable.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/rajasthan-village.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11649\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-11649\" style=\"margin-left: 10px;\" src=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/rajasthan-village-640x372.jpg\" alt=\"Rajasthan Village\" width=\"400\" align=\"right\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/rajasthan-village-640x372.jpg 640w, http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/rajasthan-village-768x446.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/rajasthan-village.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a>But the yearning to do more, and get better, is stronger than ever. Just like my travel, I am increasingly searching for meaning in my photography. As\u00a0I wasn&#8217;t sure how I can discover\u00a0meaning through study or reflection, I signed up with a mentor to help me on this. The search is on, and I am hoping to meet more eminent photographer-philosopher-activists who can help me on this personal assignments.<\/p>\n<p>I have a theory on growing as a photographer: if you look at your images from the last few years and feel awful about the work you have produced, you have probably\u00a0moved to the next level. At this time, I feel terribly awful about image I have shot until now, but I don&#8217;t see me having climbed the levels that I hoped to. But there is no dis-satisfaction; only a burning wish to learn and get better.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/varanasi.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11652\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-11652\" style=\"margin-left: 10px;\" src=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/varanasi-640x427.jpg\" alt=\"varanasi\" width=\"400\" align=\"right\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/varanasi-640x427.jpg 640w, http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/varanasi-768x512.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/varanasi.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a>I also happened to emerge the winner of 4th <a href=\"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/hipa-4th-season-awards-in-dubai.html\">HIPA<\/a> awards in Dubai. While it was good to be at the awards ceremony, it was an absolute privilege to\u00a0listen to a passionate talk from photographer Reza Deghati on how photography can change the world. His one hour talk helped me begin the process of rethinking my photography, and hopefully will be a milestone in deciding how my photography would shape up in future.\u00a0I can&#8217;t be more grateful for the opportunity to listen to Reza.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>On the personal front<\/strong>, the year couldn&#8217;t have been better. I can now confidently say that I am nearly retired! That doesn&#8217;t mean I will stop working, but attitude to work will take the approach of what a retired person would have: I would do only things that I want to, the way I want to, without taking any obligations, without worrying about results and without any pressures on finances, goals or deadlines. I feel freer than ever and feel capable of letting time take me through its flow than put things under control. Once you get there you can&#8217;t have a bad day, you feel invulnerable, can&#8217;t have anything go terribly wrong. It&#8217;s a blissful feeling, having nothing in the head.<\/p>\n<p>Well, that would be all! Wish you a happy 2016. See you round the corner, next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is really a reflective post on how the year went by and also a summery of a few posts made on this blog during the year. Skip the rants if you please. Posts on this blog. Much like 2014, I did not\u00a0write much this year. I decided to write only when I felt like, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[524],"class_list":["post-11643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meta","tag-meta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xrJt-31N","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11643"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11657,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11643\/revisions\/11657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}