GAURAV PATELme@gauravpatel.co.ukGraphic Designer

If you want to see the all the photos, they’re on my Flickr. If I’ve taken a photo of you and it’s not there, email me.

Holi, the “Festival of Colors” was actually on the Monday 1st of March, so the Borough of Richmond Upon Thames with Arts Service and the Ethnic Minorities Advocacy Group (EMAG) put on a festival on Saturday 6th March.

I did not see this festival advertised anywhere and I don’t live too far away from Twickenham, however the turnout was staggering, as was the diversity of the crowd. I seriously expected to see 2 small Indian families (do they even exist?) and a few couples, but boy was I wrong. There were people of all ages, walks of life, colours, sizes.

I went with my friend and he said something along the lines of if all people came to events like this, there would be no racism or hate towards people of certain ethnic backgrounds or their way of life. The entire day was enjoyed by absolutely everyone, I saw a sea of smiles through my cameras viewfinder and that surely can’t be a bad thing.

Update: As I do for all my events, I compile video and photos from the day and make a short YouTube clip:

The festival started off with 3 acts, a bloke, a woman, and some kids. That’s about as precise as I can get about who they were.

Just after they finished, the coloured powder was available.

They didn’t put all the powder out at once, they seemed to have the perfect amount for the people there and just kept on reissuing it after once in a while.

The music was flowing, people were dancing… and throwing powder at each other

A few local Twickenham Indian restaurants came out in full force, providing food and drink for everyone

The kids absolutely loved it and got stuck in, I didn’t see any fighting or snatching of powder

If I had £1 for every smile I captured …

Nothing Indian is complete without dancing

I think he might be famous

Some organisers with smiles and a proud look on their faces, so they should, it was organised well

With dancing, comes dance-offs. The little girl won.

‘Ello ‘ello officer

Cute couples everywhere

This chick came running up to me with handfuls of powder with the intent on throwing it on my “clean face” but ended up all. over. my. camera.

This was my first Holi experience and it was nothing short of epic. I am definitely going to this next year.

Camera: Canon 500D with EF 50mm f/1.8 II, EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 USM III

Vincent Brown (@attila) is the sole cause of my obsession of self-portraits in reflective surfaces. I can’t stop! Someone lock me up in a MySpace prison.

This photo was taken in Dharamsala, North India, home of Tibeteans in exile, and the Tibetean Government.

I’ve been stupidly busy going through all of my photos from India. I have taken over 3000, of which I am processing and organising in Adobe Lightroom. I promise to have a full, lengthy blog post up soon, preferably before the year is over.

Posted via web from Gaurav’s posterous

In the most Desi style glass known to man. Refreshing :)

Posted via email from Gaurav’s posterous

Posted via web from Gaurav’s posterous

If you told me I would recieve a 2:1 Honours degree, I would have
laughed at you.

If you told me I would get into photography, I would have laughed at
you.

If you told me I would chase my dream job, I would have laughed at you.

If you told me my brother was going to be hit by a car, I would have
killed you.

Extraordinary things happen. You don’t know when but these things will
happen.

Live today because you don’t know what’s going to happen.

Posted via email from Gaurav’s posterous

20 GOTO 10

Hello my little babushkas, I welcome you to my little piece of the Internet.

gauravpatel.co.uk serves two primary functions: to showcase my Portfolio, and somewhere that allows me to vomit my nonsensical rants. I worked closely with Max Glenister to get this site up and running, which took about 2 months from start to finish.

Navigating this place should be pretty easy, mainly because I’ve designed an awesome, easy-to-use site. Home starts off with the latest activity from Twitter, Google Reader, Last.fm, and Flickr. This is followed by the obligatory blog, which is powered by a 12 year old from Bangalo…—WordPress.

The Portfolio is broken up into 4 sections: Web Design, Photography, Abstract Art, and Wallpapers. Web Designs have their own individual pages with descriptions, but the other 3 are lightboxed. The Wallpapers are full resolution so feel free to download  and actually use them.

Rip any of my work and I will destroy your face with this very keyboard.

Lastly, I ask you to please give honest criticism and feedback on this site, as little or large, via email, Twitter, or of course, commenting on this post.

Having said all that, I hope you have a great Sunday.

Simples.

Update: Moments away from launching my website two Sundays ago (13/12/09), I decided to completely redesign the layout, after ignoring suggestions from certain people. What you see now is version 2, with much better UI and navigation. Me and Max were up until 4AM last night finishing the website. He is my residential CSS and XHTML guru (CSSuru) and I could not have pulled this off without him.

This is what the site initially looked like, gradually evolving into what you see right now. This shit is entirely powered by WordPress now, whereas version 1 had static pages for the Portfolio. Max’s work in this department is really something and I’ll leave it up to him to geek out and explain the technicalities in the comments and/or his blog.

Anyway, I have shit to do and I’m on borrowed time. I just got home from buying a new family car with my Dad and have 79 million things to do.

Oh, let me know if you see any bugs or anything wrong with the site, there undoubtedly is because my mind stopped working at 4AM.

LJ Rich, of TV fame, tweeted something I wouldn’t normally have replied to but I thought I might as well:

To which I replied:

I didn’t really expect anything to come of it. I expected what always to happen on Twitter: 1 million people @replies to them and you’re left out in the dark. Well, that obviously didn’t happen this time round because she most certainly did check out my deviantART gallery. It turns out they were to be used for the new BBC Click Bits videos!

She/They selected 4 images from my gallery, however one was actually a desktop screenshot, and I did not create the wallpaper. These pieces were chosen: Mosiac, Metal Orb, and Liquid Metal. The latter two made in 2003, with the former in 2006.

I am extremely grateful for LJ Rich for even reading my tweet, let alone going through my gallery, hand-picking pieces, then to include them in the first of the BBC Click Bits video.

A huge thank you to  LJ Rich (and I hear Zoe Kleinman helped in the creation of the video too), and the rest of the BBC Click team.