Eclipse

Not the best shots, but did start capturing the solar eclipse and had to give up in the middle.

Why?

The kids insisted on "bike riding as a family". So all four of us decided to ride a bike during the solar eclipse. It was interesting because we saw so many people in our street with video cameras on tripods and special glasses staring at the sun.

They probably all thought we were a weird family to go biking and ignoring a once in a lifetime event. Little did they know about my frustration.

People scared me about two things

1. Do Not look into the sun directly
2. Do not take pictures with the camera by trying to zoom into sun as it will damage your image sensor..

First I tried to cover the lens with some dark polythene. That created a large flare. Then decided to use my extender (which is a 2x) on my 70-200 mm f2.8 L (this is a 2000 dollar piece of glass) and initially San was giving me the look and saying "I hope you know what you are doing because you are not going to get any camera replacement money from this family!"

The thing becomes pretty bulky at this point, so a tripod is a must. (Incidentally, shot the hummingbirds kissing using this setup.. you can stay far enough from animals, birds and snakes and get shots with a 400mm setup as long as it is bright outside).

Now the extender puts the 200 f2.8 at 400 f5.6! Gets the sun pretty close. So I used a remote trigger and instead of staring at the sun directly, stared at it indirectly and took shots at 1/8000 seconds and f22 with an ISO set to 100. Pretty much pushed the exposure to bare minimum to get these shots. Also used a gap between branches in a tree to get the shots so that the Image sensor did not overload. Then cropped the images.

Next time there is a solar eclipse, going to leave home, hit the mountains and get some welders glass or the right polarizing and ND filter combinations and take photographs! (My CEO took some really neat shots using this method. He had to adjust the white balance. I didn't have to, but the effect is much better on his shots!)



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Hummingbirds

Have seen some really good photographs of Hummingbirds taken by my classmates in the last few days.

That reminded me of my chance encounter with a pair of Hummingbirds at one of those picnic tables on top of a vista point at Palm Springs last year.

Now that yours truly has Photoshop, found that picture and edited it to my hearts content..

Here is my contribution to the Hummingbird collection.

It is a pity that we cut down the honeysuckle plant in our backyard as part of the construction. Need to go buy one and plant it just to get the birds to visit our house again...

or at least put a feeder in the backyard!


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More Tulips

More shots from our one hour visit to Roosengarde near Seattle.

We drove an hour, spent less than an hour there and drove back an hour on a drizzly day, but the flowers were spectacular and made it worth the drive and back.

Note to self: Next year we should go before the farm is topped off!

It was fun photographing Tulips when the air is so clear and the colors come out so vivid that you don't have much to do in photoshop!


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Progressing further on waterfall hues

Two more pictures after making three copies of the same picture and focusing separately on water, rocks and trees and a final merge..

Another technique that came in handy was to focus separately on things in foreground and things in background (with tripod) and merge the photos together.

Tried it on the Golden Gate bridge the other day from Sausalito and it works.. Same goes for waterfalls. Got this tip from Jay Patel who happens to have a wonderful website where he tells us how he took the photograph! A big thanks to him for the pointers.

Think that pretty much covers the falls in the two mile hike radius from the parking lot!


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More from Uvas

It takes me an average of 15 minutes a photo to work out the entire pictures..

Focus on green leaves and grass, water streaks, rocks, bridges etc, skylight on individual basis and then apply all the elements to the landscape photograph.

This is no different from the teeth whitening, red eye reduction, skin wrinkle removing, eye lash sharpening and putting these elements in a portrait photo.

Still feel it is too long. Have to figure out how to automate some of these tasks!


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Back in town..

Daddy Narayanan has been traveling over the last few weeks, busy with work.

We also did some travel as a family to Reno and back. Today we spent a few hours in San Francisco visiting the Ripley's Believe it or not, followed by ice cream at our favorite joint..

The skies were a bright red, white and blue and the lights had just come on.. could not resist an attempt to make a composite HDR image..

Definitely going to buy this Photomatix software next time there is a discount coupon!

More photos of trips and funny events around the house later..



ps. The image was a composite of three images shot with self timer by placing camera on a table in the restaurant using my iPhone under the lens to lift it up..

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Airshow by accident

Over the weekend we decided to take visiting relatives to Ghirardelli's Chocolate factory. It was my first driving experiment after surgery.

One mistake.. there was an air show in the city around the Pier area and that meant there was no way to anywhere near the Chocolate factory. After driving around for an hour and realizing there was no way to park anywhere close by, not to mention the "pee pee" calls from the kids, we had to make a hasty retreat back out of the pier area.

Luckily when we stopped almost close to the freeway entrance, the planes were still circling around and the camera was in the trunk!

Quickly mounted the 70-200 and clicked a few shots from the sidewalk. The wife was surprised by my impulsiveness but when we came home and she saw the photos, her jaw dropped..

"How did you take that one?" she asked.

Told her that support in buying the 70-200mm is much appreciated. When she realized that she was the proud financier of such worthy equipment, she was beaming!

Next year, we are going to the airshow and parking ourselves at a vantage location for photograph session!


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Bang on Target

More matching dresses, courtesy of the local Target store and the kids school for making their own "tie-dye" shirts..

Goes without saying that the kids will give me one good pose and one "kurangu" (monkey) pose for every photo shoot.. Apparently that is their norm.. the photographer just found out about this today.

They make great models. Was worried that the 5D has developed a focus issue of sorts but after cleaning the lenses and mounting pins carefully, looks like there are no big issues..

Whew!



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Portrait lens

Photography forums usually tout an 85mm prime lens or a 100mm prime lens as "the" portrait lens to swear by, but the 70-200 f2.8 L with the extender 2x ii gives me amazing sharpness and fantastic Bokeh even in cloudy situations..

The little one posed for me a few minutes ago (originally brought the camera out to catch the backyard squirrel jumping off the trees but it proved too difficult for a hand held shot and that brought out the model) and junior joined in briefly for a shot..










This lens is so cool that I am having issues deleting shots off the hard drive to save photos! Want to keep every shot.

Tomorrow evening.. Hornets! Found a nest near the front yard and two big hornets. Will see how they pose..


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Arrival of the Extender

The 70-200mm f2.8 L was to be accompanied by a Canon EF 2x ii Extender which is actually a tele-converter that makes the:

70 -200 f2.8 into a
140-400 f5.6

It did not arrive with the lens before the long weekend trip but made its debut today.

Tried it on some usual subjects in the backyard and it is fantastic.

A shot of the backyard baby squirrel with the lens set to 200 mm (equates to 400mm zoom)..




Very happy.. no, make that ecstatic!



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Palm Springs - Long weekend trip

We went to Cabazon to see the life size stone dinosaurs and followed it up with a trip to Palm Springs over the Memorial day weekend.

There are over 800 photographs to check and edit and after an almost non stop drive back yesterday was too tired to even wake up and go do Yoga this morning.

Did a quick glance through all the photographs for one good snap to share for this post and here it is..




There were 4 hummingbirds outside the kiosk on top of the Palm Canyon parking lot. Two of them were doing aerial acrobatics and Kissing? Was lucky enough to get this shot.


and yes, finally got the 70-200mm f2.8 L to close out the camera bag! This picture was taken with that lens set to 200mm.

There are some really cute pictures of our own two hummingbirds, which will be posted later!


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A losing battle

The new year started with a death.. not something major but surely the elders in the family would have said "that is a bad omen".

Well, the Black Molly that lived for more than 3 years in our tank (kid you not) reached god on New Years day.

That meant a trip to the Pet store to get the last remaining fish some company. We bought a male and female Yellow mollies. The store also had a few baby black mollys which they threw in for free and the kids being kids were just thrilled to have more than one or two old slow moving fish in the tank.

As it so happened the bag with the fishes had a small snail! I never realized it.

Jr. who has very sharp eyes said "you know there is a sea snail that came with the bag. it is okay because they live in the water. our class aquarium had a sea snail". I questioned that saying "sea water is salty. this is a fresh water tank. I doubt it" and she said it was a freshwater sea snail at which point I realized that we need to fact check Jr. much like we need to fact check the Politicians in Washington. They will say whatever they have to, in order to get what they want!

Jr. pointed it out to me and this lazy thing on the bottom of the tank (smaller than a dime) did not seem to pose a threat to the fish. So I told Jr. and the little one that the snail stays till the next tank cleaning session at which point it will have to leave the tank.

Yesterday morning we went to feed the fish and found the entire walls of the tank full of black moving dots! There were hundreds of baby sea snails, if that is what they are called.

Within 24 hours some of these babies were no longer babies. they were practically the same size as the original snail and some of them started to climb the walls above the water level. Worried about a snail invasion in the house, we called the local Pet Store and the lady said "just change out the water, carefully clean everything in your tank and put it back and they will be gone"

Me : are you sure there are no microscopic eggs in the water? Am I going to be cleaning this out every alternate day?

Cust.Rep : No Sir. Just clean it out, scrub all your plants, gravel etc. and you should be fine.

So the evening was spent on cleaning, scrubbing, practically boiling the gravel in the bathroom under the hottest water available in our hot water faucet and guess what?

We put a handful of gravel back into the tank and out come two really tiny snails! Now the tank is practically empty with no decor and a few gravel stone and marbles.




The plan was to go to the store tomorrow and ask for free gravel and replacement decorations! After some internet reading it appears that there are tricks we can do with warm lettuce leaves and salt water soaking of gravel that can eliminate the problem.

Have never seen anything this scary. Saw the impact of unchecked breeding firsthand..

On the bright side, learning how to take close up videos of the fishes by using a macro lens and manually focusing on them by putting the lens practically against the glass.

It is a true test of lighting optimization!


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X-mas in the Park - San Jose - Photoblog

A street in downtown San Jose filled with rides and lights, two dozen mini Christmas trees decorated with everything from lights, ornaments to music CD's, twilight giving bright hues and saturated colors..

Here are a few photographs..



























Did get to practice motion blur shots and pulled off one with San and the little one on a swing ride. All the ideas not tried this year or ideas that came to my head only after reviewing the photos at home will be tried at the next opportunity.

When you see a Ferris wheel after dark, one should at least take one shot with long exposure times with a high f number and a curtain flash. Try it.

Here are some HD videos..













If you live in the bay area, X-mas in the park is definitely worth an evenings visit!

Walking around is free. The rides cost you tickets. An arm band for 13 bucks gives a kid unlimited rides. However, the kid has to be at least 42 inches to ride alone. If shorter an adult has to accompany the kid.

That costs you a lot of tickets or a screaming kid... your choice!

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Lessons learned and learning..

The sun was setting and the skies turned red. The green leaves looked greener.. the red ones looked a flaming red and the gold leaves, well they looked amazing!

Took a shot of the 50+ foot Crystal Amber tree in the backyard and was extremely happy with the results.




Then the thought of placing a kid in the foreground and how it would be great entered my head. My ever willing model aka Jr. said she would step out and pose for one photo and one photo only.

We took one photo and she went "Daddy, I cannot see anything anymore!". For a second I got really worried. Luckily, her temporary blindness faded and she is fine and can see everything.




Just out of curiosity, took a shot without Jr. in the frame with the flash. This thing is very very powerful! The apple tree is a good 40 feet away and it got lit up with the flash. Poor Jr. , no wonder she had a temporary blinding effect.




Should have bounced the flash off my back! There is a lot more to learn on what not to do as well as what to do with this new equipment!


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Party time, taking some things for granted

This is our fourth year at the annual IBM Christmas party for Children. Those of you who have been reading this blog long enough know that each year we put a caricature comparison of the kids done by the same Artist year after year..

This year is no exception!




Big Al actually remembered the kids this year! This year they have finally outgrown those same tee's they wore three years in a row. Both of them have mature faces now!

We also did the usual face painting, cookie decorating, getting balloons etc.




For the first time we attended the magic show and it was a ton of fun. Have never seen the kids this animated or happy in public in a long time. At Disney it was awe and wonder struck faces. Here is was pure glee!




Jr. gave me a nice pose. The little one erased part of her X-mas tree and was refusing to pose.. she is turning into a mini me. Cannot stay still in any place for more than a few seconds... she was just whizzing through the whole thing!







They do a really great job of decorating the place each year with a different type of tree (one year is green, one year is white, etc.) and the whole thing is extremely well organized!




We are all aware of the real Santa. Still the allure of sitting on Grandpa Claus and getting a picture is fun! The kids loved it.




If you do look at the youtube video link in this post, have tried to explain the issue on the video in the Youtube description. If you have any pointers towards the real problem or a fix, please let me know...

Another year has almost rolled by and is coming to a close. It has been a tough year that is coming to a close. Counting days at work, at home, over the phone with relatives..

Hope we count down the remaining days without any major issues!


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