Ten minutes from Home - A homework

The photo school homework for the week was interesting.

Drive, walk, bike from home.. stop exactly at 10 minutes. Take a photograph of the first interesting thing that catches your eye when you stop...

in Black and white!




Stopped at a Citibank Parking lot at 10 minutes and caught this tree.

In retrospect, should have adjusted the white balance or taken the shot with a higher f/stop...

There is so much to learn from not just taking the photo but when you sit down to taking a second look at it while adding finishing touches.

It can only get better with time and practice, no?


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Photoblog : Commute

The homework assignment for Photo school this week..

Commute!


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Jump fun..

The photo school assignment was "Jump!"

Here is my entry:




Here are other photos that were also considered today (you are allowed to post only one photo per assignment)..










It was a great day for going outdoors today and the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco was vibrant with colors. The greens looked green, the blues were vibrant blues, the air was so clear it was a great day to take pictures.. especially when the kids were all so co-operative for the assignment.

More photos from the half day trip tomorrow.


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Homework: Storyboard

The photoschool homework was to tell a story in three pictures..

Our story:




Pretty self explanatory, we thinks!


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Architectural Detail - photoblog

Architectural Detail, was the topic for this weeks assignment..

Pressed for time (euphemism for I was too lazy to go outside), decided to focus on things in our house and grabbed this shot of our Chandelier..




Was actually happy with the result.

ps. On a totally unrelated topic, can anyone point me to videos of Ilayaraja playing an acoustic guitar? Would really appreciate it!

Windows - Homework assignment...

Two photos for the "windows" Photo homework assignment .. Have not decided if these are it or need to find something more..









Let me know what you think..

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Bokeh - the learning continues..

The hand did take a turn for the worse and limited activity for most of the day. After a lot of rest, got up this evening and tried taking photos. Options were restricted to indoor and that meant, the Christmas lights came out!

Like they say in Tamil "Yaam Petra Inbam" ... (the happiness I received, should be passed on, no?)

The camera modification




The setup on the dining table




A few shots which are better efforts than the previous one's posted earlier










Jr. is an amazing model. After getting hit by the flash a few times, she suggested that the picture be of the side of her face. It was a great idea.

Also, a tip. If you happen to try this at home, remember that 1000+ Christmas lights generate a lot of heat, when you pile them up in a heap. You are guaranteed to get your hands burnt if you unplug the lights and try to grab them off the table. It is NOT recommended under any circumstances, especially when you are recovering an already broken hand.

My kids asked me "how can you be so smart and stupid at the same time?"

How? How?

or should I be asking myself "Why?"


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An interesting week

The temperatures dropped this week significantly. The hand which is still trying to close the gap in the bone, is feeling a lot of pain because somehow the metal pieces inside are stressing out the bone.

That has meant no sleep from 4AM to 6AM the first few days this week. Wrapping the entire arm in warm fleece blankets helped a lot.

Then the wife fell ill and between work, the kids calling me a "bad parent" and more pain in the wrist trying to exert myself, it has been a challenging week to say the least..

Going to do some camera accessory shopping tomorrow to cheer myself up.

This weeks photo homework assignment is "Bokeh" and it appears that I am way out of my league here.. Spent two hours to understand the concept (which is to highlight out of focus objects to create light patterns in the background)..

But here are some interesting results (going to work on this some more.. how they manage to get the object in the foreground in focus while still creating the shaped Bokeh is beyond me.. at least for now)

Cut out a star shaped hole on a cardboard and taped it to the focus ring..




Every point of light takes the star shape..




Notice Jr.'s eyes.. even her eyes show the star pattern (reflected from the flash).
Every light point on her necklace takes the shape of the star..





Cannot understand the physics behind it either. A flashback...

When we were going to IIT Physics coaching class, Balu Sir (god rest his soul) told us to go practice with MIR publishers book by Russian Authors "Tarasov and Tarasova" to master Geometrical Optics. There were no copies that we could get our hands on, but the platform book seller who used to have a shop at the bend near Nalli in Pondy Bazaar told me "Tarasov-aa thambi. Oru copy irukku pa.. aana Tamil copy, paravaa illiyaa?" (I have a copy kid, but it is in Tamil, you still want it?)

Two of my friends who saw me buy that book thought I was nuts. Understanding geometrical optics by reading a Russian book translated in Tamil?

Spent the next week understanding the terms for convex, concave, focus, object, image, radius of curvature etc. etc. in Tamil and figured it all out. It was actually very entertaining and rewarding.

But this Bokeh thing, beats Tarasov and Tarasova..


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Very very busy

With work..

Might be a couple of days to get back to Blogger.

Managed a 30 minute break earlier today to do the Photo school assignment, which was titled "collections" and this was my homework submission.



When you are surrounded by princesses, there is no other collection worth presenting, no?


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Shadows...the homework continues

Two more photos of shadows..

our front door glass pane casts a brilliant shadow on the wall, thanks to the sunset




and the shadow of the fish tank on the wall behind it..




The schooling continues..


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Digital Photography School

They give you homework assignments!

Nice to do Homework you like...really like!

Posting my assignments from last two weeks here.. (also on Flickr now thanks to the photo school)..







The hand is improving slowly but nicely. The range of motion has increased perceptibly. Even drove to work and back on my own yesterday! (mostly used left hand, but still this is a giant leap for sundarkind..)

We are going to wrap up the golu season this weekend.. so stay tuned for more golu photos.

Until then....



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