Manish Suwal

Usually I shoot photos, but today I got my photo taken. It was unplanned photoshoot. I was taking pictures, and asked if my picture was possible, and just took it.

I went through it, and didn’t like it much. So, just converted it to Black and White from the VSCO mobile app. Before that, I used preset from Adobe Lightroom. I use lots of VSCO film presets.

This is the first time I’m posting image as a primary source of blog post. So, I’m not sure how this will display on the blog.

Whatever happens, this is the start. I want to move further with this. Post one photo per day or something along those lines. I have lots of photo to edit, but not enough time.

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Most of the day I wake up not knowing what adventure awaits me. I just freestyle the day.

That’s probably not the best way to live, but I’ve been considering it for the time being.

After the earthquake, I have been trying to live my life to the fullest. It made me realize that I can die anytime. So, I’ve been moving after my instincts. If I feel like doing something, I’ll do it. If not, I won’t.

There’s no hard and fast rule as of now.

In the same way, I didn’t know what was going to happen today. I didn’t have any plan. I could be sleeping on my bed all day, or on a hiking trip with my friends.

Anyway, today I had to enter Swastika Hair and Makeup Studio once, which I came to know in the morning. I had some work there to photograph, which I’m not sharing in detail as of now.

Swastika Hair and Make Up Studio

By chance, Swastika happened to be my brothers friend. So, it was fun spending time there. We talked about various stuff.

She did the makeup, and I took photographs and some behind the scenes footage. I can’t publish those pictures as of now, but here’s the pic with her.

From there, we went to Tip Top in New Road for Samosa, and split our ways.

I had a great day and didn’t know anything in the morning. Not even until 1PM. I have good days when I don’t plan anything. At least, that’s happening currently.

However, even if not planning the day has been in my favour, I believe that it’s very important to plan your day. Doing so, gives perspective and birds eye view of the day, which makes it easy to complete your tasks and move further to your goals.

That’s it for the day. I’m calling it a wrap here. It’s already 22:48 and I need to sleep! Had a long, but fun day. See you soon!

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I fear posting anything on Facebook. I love hiding, and being extremely mysterious.

Posting anything on Facebook lets people know what I’m up to and my core lifestyle. That’s what I fear the most.

Through that perspective, these blog posts are also the same thing. And I think that’s why I can’t share these blog posts as well. I find it very difficult. It’s like being extremely vulnerable.

As soon as you open up, there’ll be plenty of space for people to attack you.

I love the idea of defensive play. If you have a good defence, you automatically have a good offence.

I like not letting people know what I’m up to. That will help me create as many escape plan as I want. I won’t be tied to a certain reality. If I post about something specifically, people will know I’m into it and so they’ll start to associate it with me.

I’ll have to create a false identity just to impress them or to keep my image up to their standards of the false me. In simple terms, it means that I need to be someone I’m not, just to fit in other people’s standards.

Anyway, this fear is still within me. The fear of not being able to post anything on Facebook. I just don’t find it comfortable sharing.

Now I have a problem. No one will be able to read these stuff I write. If I never share, no one will ever read my writings. And marketing / sharing is very important for our blog to grow.

Today morning, I came across a blog post by Patrick Bet David called ENTREPRENEURS #1 RULE OF MARKETING. It basically explains why it’s important to focus on a specific niche and audience. Your customers, clients or audience can’t be everybody.

The more you funnel down, the more you’ll succeed in terms of marketing a product or service.

This is both, a good news and a bad news for me. Good news is that I don’t have to share my blog with everybody because I can consider creating a specific set of people who’d be interested in my work and then post it to them.

The bad news is that it’s impossible to figure out who are the audience before even showing my work to everyone. So, it’s extremely difficult position to be in.

I’m still thinking about it, and haven’t reached to any conclusion yet.

That’s it for the day, see you soon!

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I am choosing new theme for this blog. I originally had the default twentyfifteen WordPress theme.

Before I even had this domain, I was inspired by Caroline Moore. She has a personal blog where she posts everything about her daily life. She blogs at CarolineMoore.net. When I looked at her blog, I loved it. That’s when I wanted to have my own personal blog.

So to make myself feel better, I chose the same theme she uses to run CarolineMoore.net. It’s the “Circa” WordPress theme by Automattic.

I’m not sure that I’ll use this theme forever, but I like the start. The problem I see is in the featured image. It shrinks the dimensions of my original image.

For now, this is how it looks:

Edit 2016-01-03: This was my another blog. I imported these articles from that blog, so this blog post “Choosing New Theme For This Blog” showed up. I haven’t changed the theme in this blog, and it remains the same.

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Some days ago, I wrote a post about freestyling the day. That’s what happened this Saturday.

I had no idea what to do. I was bored.

I called my friend and asked him if he wanted to travel somewhere. He said yes. So, I called him at my place.

We left the house not knowing where to go. Khokana came to my mind and we traveled there.

Since it was Saturday, there were lots of people. But it was fun.

Begambeli Garden Restaurant

We stayed there from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM and then went Begambeli Garden Restaurant. I love that restaurant, the place, the scenery and the environment.

However, our visit to the restaurant was very disappointing. Our orders were cancelled and it took almost 3 hours for our food to arrive. It was a nightmare. I have never waited anywhere this long for a food.

They said it was all because of the gas shortage that made it difficult for them to manage food for all their customers.

After that, we left the place and came back home. It was a fun day, nonetheless.

The post Khokana Came To My Mind and We Traveled There appeared first on Enwil.

Today morning I woke up with a notification from VSCO. It read, “Your image has been published to VSCO collection“.

I was happy. It made my morning.

But this is not the first time my image has been selected by VSCO. This is the third time my image was selected for the VSCO collection. I have received other e-mails from VSCO stating that my image was posted to show up in curated search results.

I’m not sure exactly what that is, but I think it’s where people find my image if they search for something. I guess they add a keyword for my image so that people can find it.

For example, if I post a photo of a bridge, they’ll probably make it available for people when they search ‘Bridge’ on the VSCO app or website.

Here’s the e-mail I received from them when my image was made available on curated search results:

However, the email I receive when my image has been posted on VSCO collection is different.

There’s ability for other VSCO users to follow you. After my image was published to a VSCO collection, many people followed me:

VSCO Notification

This motivates me to create more images from VSCO. I’m loving it more and more. The more I use it, the more my images are published to a collection and then more I want to post on it.

In my next post, I’ll explain how to get your images posted on VSCO and why I love VSCO so much. You can consider subscribing here if you don’t want to miss out those posts.

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I had been editing this video since I recorded it. But for some reason I was not able to complete editing it. Yesterday, I worked on it and then uploaded it on YouTube.

I’m not completely happy with the video. But if I try to make it perfect, then I know I’ll never release it. That’s the biggest problem I face all the time. I try and make something perfect, and never work on it.

Instead of doing that, it’s way better to work on it and ship it as you complete editing.

There are different techniques I wish I used while making the video. I’ve found many mistakes. But I think of them as happy mistakes.

Next time, my video will improve because I’ll start to make less mistakes. The more and more video I make, the better I will become.

I uploaded the video, and thought of naming it, “A day in Bhaktapur during Dashain 2015.” I mostly find it difficult to name my files or videos.

I hope you’ll enjoy the video.

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I have been posting photo a day on my Instagram starting from 2016. This time, I thought of posting it on Facebook too.

I just share it on Facebook through Instagram. It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything on my Facebook. And this is how I’m starting.

When I post on Facebook after a long period of time, many users don’t get to view my work. It’s because of the Facebook algorithm. If many people like it within a short period of time, then there’s a chance that my work will be showcased to other users.

I received some likes on the first day, a bit more on the second and it’s been increasing since the third day. The photo I posted yesterday received more than 40 likes until now.

40 likes is nothing, but for me during this time, it’s a lot. I really don’t share my work with many people. I just share it among small group of friends.

I run many Facebook pages, and they all have thousands of followers. Hundreds of likes is pretty normal. And I’m numb to it. I really don’t care.

But when I received likes on my personal account, I started feeling happy. Like I want to work on it more, and produce more work so that more people can view it.

However, being motivated solely based on Facebook likes is a dangerous thing.

First of all, you’ll start to get numbed down by the likes. The reason I’m happy that people like my work is because I haven’t used Facebook for a long time. Even one like means a lot to me. But if I keep using it like before, I’ll get numbed down by it.

Hundreds of likes won’t even matter, and my main source of inspiration and motivation will suffer.

While moving on, a photo you posted on January 6 might receive more likes than the photo you post on January 18. So, you’ll feel like your work is degrading because more people didn’t like your post.

The best thing to do would be post photos irregardless of the likes.

Here’s the link to the Instagram Album from my Faceboook account. And here’s the Album on my Facebook Page.

The post Why You Should Never Focus on Facebook Likes For Motivation appeared first on Enwil.

I was not sure what to post on the sixth day of my photo project. I was going through my photo feed on VSCO, and I saw an image I took in Khokana.

I took it some months ago while I was visiting the place with my friends.

I was not sure how to edit, so I thought of converting it to black and white first through the VSCO app.

After that, I played with different tools to make it darker and more visually interesting.

Gave it some finishing touch in the end.

I was not satisfied with the image, I wanted to add something. So I went ahead to the tangent app and added a round shape in the original image.

I didn’t like the shape. Went ahead with another one.

Loved this shape. The middle point was in the person standing in the middle of the ground. It made it look visually satisfying.

After that, all I needed to do was convert into black and white similar to the one that I did in the beginning and then add moon to the background. I was inspired to add props–moon–in the image by reading this interview of Jill Emmer.

Here’s the final image:

I hope you found this post helpful.

There’s only one thing that I regret. Not taking a screencast of all the process. I could have made a video walking through exactly what I did.

If you liked this image, I post them regularly on my Instagram. And also on my Facebook page and Facebook account.

Here’s the list of apps I used to edit this image:

1. VSCO App
2. VSCO Film for Lightroom
3. Tangent App
4. Adobe Photoshop CC
5. Adobe Lightroom 5

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I have been going through lots of change in my life right now. I’ve grown past my old self. Writing was very important goal for me some years ago. It still is, but other interests like photography and film-making is taking over it.

There’s always a change in perspective and interests in life. If not, we’d not grow.

For the past couple of months or even a year, I have been thinking that I have lost my ability to write. I was really good at it, and then I completely stopped after the earthquake. However, now that I think back, I don’t regret much.

First of all,  has enabled me to add skills to my portfolio. So now I have lots of skills under my belt.

I can’t see how it will be helpful for me right away. But I’m sure with time, those skills will help me to produce more contents out to the world.

For example, I have photography, videography, web design, etc under my belt. So, in the future, when I need to add those areas on my content, I won’t have to rely on others. I can do it by myself.

From most of 2012 to up until early 2015, my main focus was writing. I was doing a good job. I also focused on web designing and programming. That was what I’d do most of the time.

During that time, I was slowly getting into photography. I did have eye for photography before that, but I never invested in it. Having a friend who was into photography was a huge help. He was a catalyst on my journey of becoming a photographer.

After the earthquake, because of the panic and terror, I started to lose focus on my personal projects. I was just thinking about living my life. So, staying at one place was very hard for me. I then started traveling a lot with my friends. I would eat lunch and then move out.

During that time, I started taking lots of photographs. And since I wasn’t writing or working on web-designs, I started investing more time on it.

Slowly I started to make videos as well. Right now, most of it is private. But slowly, I hope to create nice videos to bring it out in the public.

As for photos, I’ve just been uploading on Instagram. It auto-shares on my Facebook account. The only problem is that it’s exposed to only my friends on Facebook. I want to reach out to more audience. So now I’m thinking of making Enwil.com my photography page and then post photos on Nepalese in Photography with my Facebook account. I’ll do that starting from January 1, 2017. That’s the plan.

I’m also thinking of posting link to the image from my website if that would help. I’ll see what I’ll do.

Right now, as I’m writing this, I feel like everything I’m writing here is irrelevant to the reader. It serves no purpose. It’s just my personal life rambling. Sometimes, I want to keep it. Sometimes, I think against it.

Starting today, I might ramble a bit more than usual until I find my voice. Until I figure out what to write or how to write or the perfect workflow.

I’m redesigning my website for sure. I’ll create a template and then work on making a homepage with photography as well. Let’s see how it will go. But I don’t have much time to do it. Just 1 month. I need to work hard!

Next project is to keep aside the best blog posts I’ve written and create an e-book which I could share it with my subscribers. That would be something. Or even post it on Amazon if possible. But I don’t know. Those are just some ideas I have in my mind.

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WHEN YOU BEGIN A GAME…

Dr. Pulsipher –

“When you begin a game, you must first learn something about each of your opponents. Sometimes you will know quite a bit to begin with, but you can also ask people who know the opponent better than you do. You want to know if your opponent is generally reliable or not, what his objective is, whether he is a classical or romantic player, and whether or not he is good at negotiation, strategy, and tactics…

”Whether a player’s style is “classical” or “romantic” is tricky to define. Briefly, the classical player carefully maximizes his minimum gain. He pays attention to detail and prefers to patiently let the other players lose by making mistakes, rather than trying to force them to make mistakes. He tends to like stable alliances and steady conflict in the game. He tends to be reliable and good at tactics. The romantic is more flamboyant, taking calculated risks to force his enemies into mistakes, trying to defeat them psychologically before they are defeated physically on the board. (Many players give up playable positions because they’re convinced that they’ve lost.) He [the romantic player] tries to maximize his maximum gain, at the cost of increasing potential loss.”

If you skimmed the above two paragraphs, please immediately go re-read them carefully. I say without exaggeration – this is one of the single most insightful and important lessons I ever learned, in all of life.

The classical player carefully maximizes his minimum gains.

The romantic player tries to maximize his maximum gain, at the cost of increasing potential loss.

— The Strategic Review by Sebastian Marshall || Link to the post

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I don’t know what’s going on in specific direction. I’m everywhere right now. Shooting photos and videos. Building websites. Meeting people. Dreaming big.

I’m doing many things right now being hopeful for the future. I’m trying to hang out with executioners instead of the talkers. I spent almost a decade hanging around people who don’t execute much. It was very difficult to accomplish anything.

Right now, I believe I’m around people who actually get things done, and I’m very excited about that. I’m just switching sides. Less of ideas and more of execution.

This has been a pretty hard journey for me personally. A decade ago, I thought I’d have accomplished something big by now. But I’m nowhere. That kind of hurts, but I’ve also learned to accept it.

I’m at peace now knowing that everything will work out in the end. However, some part of me is still longing for that accomplishment. So, it’s a difficult spot for me to explain.

Anyway, I just wanted to stay updated on that front. I’ll try keeping this place updated as my life moves on.

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It’s easy to create a goal for yourself, but hard to execute it. Most of the time, you just need to use your willpower to accomplish the goal. However, there are times when your sheer willpower won’t make a difference. That’s when you need a mentor or an accountability partner.

Until few years ago, I used to create a goal for myself and execute it. I wouldn’t succeed at all the tasks, but I’d at least reach somewhere close to it. It’s been couple of years that I’ve not been able to kickstart any projects or complete previous projects that I started. Nothing works.

My doctor recommended me to see a psychologist. I met psychologist few times and I’ve already started seeing some changes in me. This blog post wouldn’t have been possible without his help. He’s like a mentor and accountability partner for me. He asks me some questions, figures out my pain points and helps me solve those problems.

I meet him every week. I have set of problems that I want to improve upon. He helps me tackle all those problems one by one on every visit.

I’ve been struggling for a long time is waking up early. I tend to wakeup, but use smartphone on bed until I feel sleepy and sleep until late hours. My problem was using the smartphone. He asked me to come up with solutions for the problem.

Note that he didn’t provide solutions, but asked me to tell him the possible solutions. He’s making me think of solution which will be feasible according to me. That’s usually the problem with other advice givers. They give the same general advice to everybody and it doesn’t work because it’s not customized for every person.

I provided solutions: read book, deep breathing and counting backwards to fall asleep. That actually worked. However, I still fail at it sometimes. I’m more aware of it and that’s what matters.

After that, the next was occupying myself in the morning. Doing something productive. For me productive was writing journal, updating website and creating portfolio – photos and videos. Today I wrote on 750words and then started writing blog post on my website – this website.

I’m happy that it’s working for me and it wouldn’t have been possible without the help of my psychologist. Maybe you are struggling with something and you can’t get to overcome it. If that’s the case for a long time, maybe it’s helpful if you see a mentor or create an accountability partner.

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