Long weekend

After many years, we are staying put at home for the long weekend, helping my parents adjust to the USA.

Daddy and the little one are also recovering from their sore throats, surprise gifts from the weather change here. It was a 15 degree drop from the usual high temps the last two days.

We decided to go hit the one local indoor place where the grandparents could walk and the kids could have fun for a few hours! The Great Mall..

It took us a good 25 minutes to find a parking spot, but off we went with the sea of people shopping for "sale" items and got the kids some summer wear.

They promptly posed for my indoor photo shoot.

More tomorrow..

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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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A little cheer

Have not had this kind of allergies in the last ten years. Slept through the entire day. Came out feeling a lot better.

The kids came home and saw my screensaver, which had the Tulips.

Me : Do you guys like it?

Little One : Not really!

Jr. : Not really!

Me : Why? I thought it is a great shot!

Jr.: The storm clouds in the back are scary.

Me : It was taken near Seattle and it was raining when we went there. You can see the water drops on all the tulips, can't you?

LO : Now that you have photoshop, can't you make the sky brighter or something?


Me : LOL! Sure we can. Was using Photoshop to get the features in the clouds out. Now I will go remove the features and make it brighter for you..

So, the first thing after they went to bed..

Old Photo..

New Photo..

Think Seattle could use a perpetual Cloud brightening plugin on Photoshop, at least for kids who are born and raised here in Silicon Valley!


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Roosengarde Tulips

The perceptive lull in blog posts is due to three things

1. Lot of travel. In the last 21 days have visited Austin, Phoenix, Seattle. While the first two were business trips, the last one was personal. We attended the Ceremonial South Indian Baby Shower for my SIL. It was a fun event with family and friends.

2. The increased travel which translates indirectly to yoga attendance has left me with some vulnerability for hay fever and allergens. Also flights at this season must be notorious for picking up germs. No amount of Emergen-C packets prepared me for the allergy onslaught this week. Had to leave work thursday afternoon and slept through the entire evening. In a fit of determination, went and did Yoga first thing friday morning only to be sent back reeling friday night. Right now the body is on a delicate balance and have waved the white flag with the pollen around Cupertino.

3. There was a lot of photoshopping between sickness and work in the evenings over the last week. Finally got done with that.

While we were in Seattle got a chance to visit Roosengarde, a place for Tulips. We missed the fields of Tulips by 3 days. They did have a few gardens still left uncut and we were lucky enough to get some snaps. Now that my strategy for Photographing landscapes has changed with the Photoshop CS5, you can see the preliminary results ..

More to come, pollen permitting!


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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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Uvas Canyon

We visited Uvas Canyon State Park near Morgan Hill last Sunday with the Cousins. Was in two minds to go on Sunday as there was an early flight to catch on Monday morning, but went anyways.

We walked around for 5+ hours through the park and covered multiple waterfalls and walked along creeks. It was a very pleasant day and we thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon enjoying nature.

This was my first trip with the Canon 5D Mark II with the L series lens and most importantly the Manfrotto tripod.

The pictures have improved by leaps and bounds compared to the old broken tripod and the 400D + sigma lens combination. Not that those were bad photographs but yours truly has learned a lot of tricks since that trip two years ago..

Here are a few pictures.. (the second and fourth Images are HDR composites of 5 images taken at -2.0, -1.0, 0, +1 and +2 Exposures respectively and then tone adjusted in Photoshop)

Seriously thinking of getting a photo site..

Any suggestions?

A trip to Sausalito

Last weekend we decided to drive to Sausalito, thanks to NPR. Apparently the storm had moved over the bay area and it was supposed to be an extremely good visibility day to see the golden gate bridge and also the road down to Sausalito was going to be kept open over the weekend.

So off we drove and had a great time. Got to take some pictures of the bridge, then the kids spent two hours at the Kids discovery museum and we ended up driving around the cute downtown in Sausalito and had some great food at a Nepalese restaurant called "Taste of the Himalayas"

It was an afternoon well spent with something for everyone in the family!

A few photographs from the trip.

Separate posts on the museum trip and tiffin experience later...


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Pu'ahi crater

Before..

After edits

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Waterfalls

Another shot with the clouds coming out and the water showing all the detail..

Before PS

After PS

Portraits are not so easy to adjust unless the original lighting setup was perfect. Having a busy week with a stomach bug, a conference and an irritated family thanks to the little one refusing food...

Portraits will have to wait till the weekend!

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More from the tide pools..

Double processed to bring out the glow!


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Progression..

First two days of playing with Landscapes... clouds, sky, mountains, water etc..

Then on the way to preparing for Portraits a brief stop with some flora and fauna.

Presenting, the dragonfly!

Feedback to improve these photos are welcome.

Have now learned to write "actions" which are Photoshop Macros and the process is definitely speeding up.


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Before and After..

Before..

(actual shot from Hawaii trip converted from CR2 to JPG - linked in original post)

After..

Every detail shown in picture was actually there in the original photo, just not visible. When I took the picture remember the sky being so amazing and felt that I had done something wrong after downloading the pictures. Now realize what was wrong. This changes my strategy for taking pictures as well. At the risk of not getting a bright photo, going to go for a slightly over exposed image which captures details in the dark or better still start taking bracketed photos as a default when going for landscapes!

Now it takes me 15 minutes to fix pictures where clouds and rocks had no detail.

Next step, learn how to fix portraits of the kids and my VC.. aka Sangeetha!

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Amazing

I am like a kid in Grand Sweets and Snacks (not exactly a candy store person)...

Look at this image from the tide pool visit, which was not a bad shot considering the sun was in the picture!

Now look at this after Photoshopping!

Can get the detail in the sky and the sea weed and kelp on the floor. Can even bring out detail on the family in the center.

Hats off to these guys who came up with an image processing software with so many options.


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Shopping spree

Photoshopping spree that is..

Today a good 3 hours was spent watching an intro to Photoshop DVD followed by editing an old image from the Hawaii trip.

Even managed to create a nice logo with Tamil Letters and English to sign off images.

The original image had too much washout. You either got the little one and no clouds or great clouds and her silhouette.

Now who says you can't have your kid and the clouds too?

This is a start. At places it looks a little artificial, but will improve with practice.

The goal?

Edit at least one photo a week
Watch at least one 5 minute tutorial video every night before going to bed and
practice what was learned the previous night the next evening for 5 minutes

Have to see how it goes over time


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The photoshop allure

After using freeware for almost 16 years to edit images, finally got Photoshop CS5, thanks to a friend who works at Adobe!

In the last 24 hours have been watching online videos to grasp some basics of image editing.

Jr. , my all time favorite model posed for a sample picture to start the editing process.

It is a simple image of her in front of our living room wall, but gives enough material to practice a few tutorials ..

The software is amazing if you can find things in the myriad menus embedded in every nook!

For now learned to do basic image edits, convert an image to black and white, selectively colorize areas of a picture, create a border, add a copyright symbol into the signature (which took the longest time to figure out) and save the picture to custom specifications!

This software is probably going to keep me on a steep learning curve for a year or more!

Well, never too late to play with pictures at another level..


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Rain means water droplets..

Took this shot this afternoon after a heavy drizzle..

Very happy with the end result. When it is drizzling and the sky is overcast, the colors come alive!


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Slave Flash

It is windy and chilly outside and has been the whole day. So the family stayed indoors..

Played with the slave flash after reading my Master and Slave manuals twice! and got a few shots .. Still a long way to go before perfecting positioning, power, strobe etc. etc.

This statue from our Ummachchi shelf is around 2 inches tall but had lot of detail..

Jr. was a much better subject. This flash definitely opens up some interesting possibilities to get off axis lighting and the ability to create nice shadows

Plus, much fun can be had by hiding the slave flash on a shelf or behind them and see how they are surprised by lights going from different angles.

The experiments continue..

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