NORAK inspiring Islam for children

Life, is beautiful. What makes it even more pretty are the astounding unique ideas of brilliant people.

Meet Sara Hussein! Another brilliant girl. One of the many beautiful people on earth who came forward with a unique and productive idea of her own. NORAK. “A product that brings the beauty of Islam and Technology together.”

 

I came across this product on Twitter, when I met Sara who was extremely busy running the fundraiser campaign. You all remember the Pop Quranic Book by Hajera Memon, right? A product that I got to know via twitter as well. The news update on that one is that it raised the required funding to go ahead with their project and now they are in the production phase.

As for NORAK , the journey has just started and am so glad that they have raised $2,526 already. With 13 days left to reach their target of $50,000 , Sara is hopeful that it would turn out well. See her website http://bit.ly/1e48ekZ

Is it just about lights?

This is where you’ll be surprised my friend. NORAK is a WONDER. In the words of the creator of this product,

“I created this product to help enhance my children’s bedtime routine and give them something that holds true to our Islamic identity, as well as giving me the freedom to be in control my children’s bedtime routine. In a world filled with technology it can sometimes feel like everything around us is chosen for us before we even get given a choice.

When I was looking for night-lights for my son to help him get to sleep at night all I could find was the same generic moons and stars with pre-installed musical lullabies. I believe that the Quran is our light in this world and so it’s important to be able to share that with our children as soon as we can. With NORAK you can choose what you listen to, and if you take a look at our perks you can get one of the first ever NORAKs to be made with a micro-SD card pre-loaded with Quran for you to listen to.

Although NORAK was designed with children in mind, it’s also a beautifully timeless classic addition to the home. It’s a piece of art / technology that is interchangeable between generations. From babies to grandparents were confident this is a gift to give or keep.” 

I find her story very inspiring and her kids too adorable. NORAK is like a perfect gift you can gift to your kids and to your friends as well. If you haven’t checked out their site yet, Follow them and support their campaign by helping in raising the funds. Click here to run fast to their site.

May Allah help NORAK get launched good and soon. Ameen

 

P.S! Happy 200th Post to me 🙂

 

When you want to stay away from your Camera

Ever since I got my new camera, Canon 600D, I have been doing photography almost everyday. All my posts are about photography and all my days revolve around ideas that can improve my skills.

This. is. getting. too.much.now! I want to take a break from my camera, break up with it for awhile, announce to my family that I’m on a vacation and would concentrate on reading and writing alone. If you’re also that person who feels its getting a bit overwhelming with shooting all the time, you need to stop too and do something else. Refresh your system and I know, even though it would be hard to stay away from your camera, you need to try for the sake of saving your other talents and plans for life. If you’re a writer , this break is definitely needed for your soul.

Help yourself by knowing these points. 

1- A picture is better than a thousand words. But words are there for a reason. Tell yourself that. Realise it and don’t over do it with photography. Still can’t stop? Find a way to add words to your picture. Make long descriptions, this way you would find the joy of writing again and the devil camera might leave your mind for awhile.

2- Know that everything can’t be photographed. There are emotions that you can’t capture in still photography but only in words. Make schedules, do photography but only once a week. On other days, do something else that gives you joy. Write if that’s what makes you happy. Don’t give up.

3- And finally, make your photography meaningful. Don’t just snap snap and snap all the time. Go for conceptual photography and if you know what that is, you also know that is it takes proper planning and timing because its like a project and not photography for the sake of photography alone.

When I’m back with my camera and we are no longer in a broken relationship, I’ll start writing digital photography tutorials to help you learn how I do my stuff and also to make room for writing.  Meanwhile, enjoy some last of my work because you won’t be seeing much of it for few days.

 

 

 

 

 

The Whirling Dervishes & The Jumping Gilgit Men

I had another blast just few hours ago. I was taken to Gilgit, Baluchistan, Kashmir,  some more places and ahan!  Konya, Turkey!!

I got to Enjoy that famous Turkish dance, yup, that whirling dervishes performance where they spin round and round endlessly.

Are you kidding me, Khanum?

No, I am serious. But I didn’t actually go to all those place, All this was brought  right here in Lahore at Expo Centre, Cultural Night, infact. Not only this, I also got to enjoy a dance performance by gilgit group.

I must say it was my favorite one out of all the performances. It was soothing and beautiful.

 

The men in the background played beautiful flute or sitar, whatever it was, while two men danced so elegantly on stage in white  shalwar kameez. The amazing thing was their jumps! Yup, they jumped so high many times in it. Ooooo it was so entertaining! Look again, at the jump!

 

Then a 3rd one joined them on stage and it got all bomb amazing.

So good that even Turkish dervish dance performers couldn’t help but observe them from behind the curtain. Have a look at the picture below! See, how amused the man is  behind the curtain at backstage ?

This was very new to me. I am not a concert person. Nor it was a concert but somewhat near to that. The Turkish performance was not as I imagined it would be, I was waiting for a moment when I would feel a certain emotion and go in trance or something. But It was rather strange, I wonder how they could say that this specific dance was a form of worship. How can an act of worship be  a performance that needs an audience any way?

But I have to say the stamina these men displayed was enormous. They kept whirling for like an hour or maybe more than that. It requires stamina and alot of patience. That’s the only inspiration this could convey.

Perhaps I need to go to Turkey to see the real thing.  And to china as well. Because the Dragon dance that was the second biggest attraction of the night got cancelled at the last minute. I was very disappointed. Let’s hope they arrange another cultural night for that. However, I would appreciate it if they would make it less noisy. I don’t know , maybe its me, but my head was already aching bad after an hour inside that auditorium. Do I need to add that few people among the Pakistani audience are total idiots? Why the heck they had to whistle even at the Whirling Dervishes performance is beyond me. Clapping out of the blue was another hilarious and entirely crazy act. Minus that, it was a GREAT night for Photography. Hope you like the pictures out of the 500 that I took! Lol

 

 

 

Another long and rather strangely new kind of performance was given by a group of men in colorful frocks. They also said their dance was “Inspired by Sufism”, by the way.

 

 

 

The night is long gone. The performances are done, but I am still mesmerized by that one performance.

No .. not the Whirling one. But the one by The gilgit group who had amazing outfits with caps having pigeon feather on top like a crown and jumped so high while dancing. This makes me want to visit Gilgit.

A very pleasing idea.

Lunar Corona seen through my Baby Lens, April 2014

Behold! what you have often seen but probably didn’t knew what it was.  That’s Lunar Corona.

Lunar coronae are much more familiar than those around the sun. They are seen when the clouds are thin enough that each single corona light ray reaching the eye is scattered or diffracted by only one droplet. Of course, the whole corona is made by a great many droplets individually scattering the moonlight.

Sometimes as clouds pass over the moon the corona shrinks and swells as different sized droplets mould it. Small droplets make the largest coronae with aureoles a few moon diameters across.  — Source 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shootout at Sahiwal

Last week, me along with my two cartoon cousins rocketed our way to another city on some business. We had never imagined that this trip would become this memorable and fun.I never left my camera. They never left me.

Even on our last day, few minutes before we departed, *while me all teary* We discovered my cousin’s grandfather’s Rifle. Could we three loony toons stay away from it? Nope. Ever since I got an upgrade on my camera, I have become my cousins professional photographer, so we had to test its beauty. Here are some pictures from that dangerous weapon’s test shoot.

P.S. No human or animal was injured during the test shoot, I assure you all. It was completely a safe rifle to play with. Actually its a rifle that is used to shot lizards in the house, as my khala is very scared of them. So do the math now about its safety.

 

 

 

 

Creating Personalized desktop wallpapers

 

With Canon 600D in my life now, everything is different. The mood is different, my days are different and so as my desktop. Recently I found out that apart from the video making and photography experiments, The best part is to be able to create my own desktop wallpapers. I not only created wallpapers for my laptop but also for my cousin’s desktop. Alhamdulillah!It turned out great.

Why would you create desktop wallpapers anyway, Khanum? Don’t you have some cool photography to do?

Well! The answer is very simple. Originality is the keyword for a photographer and not “something big” or “something small”. As long as your work is original, your work is grand. Secondly, I like to have things my way, especially on my desktop. I wanted to have something new and fresh, also something with cool colors so I did what seemed best. Plus, its much fun to do so. If you’re into photography or just want to try out something with your kit lens, I would recommend, this exercise first ,just to test the limits of your creativity and also the limits of your camera.

The above shot was taken just to test the bokeh effect thing. I wanted to see how I can have nice looking bokeh in daylight, so I grabbed my canon, hit the landscape mode or perhaps portrait mode, I don’t rememeber now, hehe ! The point is, I was able to find pretty flowers in my courtyard and shoot them with bokeh effect. And voila! The test shot came out pretty well, well enough to make it to my desktop wallpaper collection. Enjoy the rest of the pictures. 

 

 

Her Smile in Black & White

   

“Smiling is infectious,
you catch it like the flu,
When someone smiled at me today,
I started smiling too.” 

Whoever said these words, said it so true. I enjoy photographing kids, especially when they are this bubbly. This little girl is my cousin, Mehr un Nisa, we call her Mehru.

Masha Allah! Her smile is quite photogenic and what’s more good about her smile is that it suits the black & white canvas. I personally love black & white photographs more than the color ones. They speak many things.  And the best day to take B&W photos in natural day light is when it’s cloudy and about to be rainy outside.