Pumpkinography continues..

This year the Halloween weekend has been a hectic affair with Grandma traveling, an exam week at Tamil school and Jr. having her annual day function at her music school.

Got together with the cousins for a couple of hours as the weekend got to a close and carved a pumpkin.

It has become an annual event since BB started this as a tradition of sorts in 2005!

This years effort..

and the lineup photo!

Work is hectic but interesting and the busy schedules have kept me from doing a lot of things like Blog at least twice a week, call family members on phone more regularly, take more photographs, check out DPS etc. In a few weeks will get used to the new routines and will get back to these missed things more frequently.

One thing though that has changed is that I am not checking facebook status anymore. So much that Facebook sent me an email saying "Hi Sundar, here is some activity you may have missed on facebook"... Guess when you are trying to find time to go take a bio break every now and then, Facebook activity is not going to be on the priority list!

On the bright side, back in the Yoga room. Was sitting out a few poses the first few classes post surgery, but yesterday tried the entire sequence. There is great progress with the hand. Has been one month since the surgery as of today and managed a locust pose today without any pain!



The festival and birthday season is here and things seem to be on the right track. What more can one ask for?

.

We are still carving pumpkins

Five years ago, when the little one was still inside mommy's tummy, we had our first encounter with pumpkin carving!

There were grand plans to start a new festival called Walloween and daddy's road to becoming a congress lobbyist to promote Watermelons, which unfortunately has not materialized!

Daddy is still with his day job and the years rolled by..

The little one who must have been sensing things from the inside is turning into a maestro carver! We were initially apprehensive of handing the carving blades to a not yet five year old, but she was so confident that we decided to let her have a go at it.




The result was amazing, to the point where daddy exclaimed "She is my true heir to the carving throne!"




Jr., who is more of a carving critique than a carver herself decided to do her bit as well this year.




Mommy supplied us with all the pumpkins thanks to her employer having a contest of sorts at work. Daddy coached mommy on the fine art and she won a nice prize + a free pumpkin to go with the prize...




We also had the cousins over to join us with the carving today and did the lineup photo.




Today in Tamil school there was a parade for all the kids. 1000+ kids all dressed in costumes doing a parade after Tamil class was over. It was quite a sight.

We did do the local trick or treating over a half hour period before the little one got scared by a small dog. They had elaborate scary mechanized ghosts, skeletons etc.. a fog machine and eerie sound effects and she braved all that and went to the doorbell (while Jr. stood far away in fear), but the sight of the small dog that licked her knee, sent her scurrying!

All said and done, it was a relatively quiet and nice Halloween.




The Pumpkinography will continue..


.

Two plus two plus two equals...

Pumpkins + some time available on a gloomy Saturday afternoon + new lens = HDR photos!!

High Dynamic Range photos, created by superimposing multiple shots of same object with a constant exposure time but with different f stop settings to get fine details on over exposed and underexposed areas of picture.

If that was all information overload, the idea is to create a photo that closely captures what the human eye can see. (It also adds a depth perception)

A glass globe on our dining table (composite image from 4 images 1/8 s exposure f2.5, f3.2, f4.5, f6.3)




and the pumpkin, a composite of 5 images with 1 second exposure and f11.0, f8.0, f5.6, f4.0, f2.8




Okay, time pass is over..

Off to do more serious things!

Wishing all those who celebrate a "Happy Hallllllloooooweeeeen!"





ps. Updated globe..






.

Pumpkinography - yet again...

Halloween weekend begins!

We had a quiet pumpkin carving session at the Cousins place and had a parade with four kids. It was quiet quite fun. Tomorrow will be the trick or treat routine (if it doesn't rain or get too cold)




This year, I was not sure of my carving abilities, what with the right hand being at 25% strength and all, but took a long time and used the "erumbu oora kallum theyum" routine (even an ant can polish a stone by repeatedly walking on it...) and managed a scarecrow and a crow in the background.

The pictures..




The idea was to carve two images and have one create a shadow. The Michael Jackson looking scarecrow on one side and a crow on the other side to get the shadow. The crow side...




The MJ scarecrow with a bird on his hand..




Looks like the standard has been set very high in the previous years. Jr., said "good, but not as good as the spider we did last year"!

(Checked and found that the spider was not last year..Previous pumpkin links from 2005, 2006-1, 2006-2, 2007-1, 2007-2, 2008)

Next year, it is going to be a web full of spiders, on all sides..


.

Weekend Photos

The weekend was spent in San doing a traditional folk dance performance as part of a group of eight, a lot of quiet gardening and Jr. doing a coconut shell decoration.

The dance performance was impressive and so is the organization for which they did the dance. A separate post on India TEAM later.

As for gardening...





and for the artwork..




The week that started with a scare has ended nicely..

.

There are two sides to..

There are two sides to every pumpkin. Many more if you consider that it is round! At least two sides though, from a carving point of view!




With a lot of enthu this morning (thanks to a good night's sleep), daddy decided to carve up what remaining space was available on the small pumpkin from last night.(note the small circle, which was the little one's contribution to the drawing effort. Next year, we will ask her to draw a pillaiyar suzhi, which will be added to the carving and give a new desi twist to Halloween)




For added effect we decided to use the haunted house to create a shadow on the wall for the pictures.




Now that a more complicated pattern has been done, daddy is happy and will take a long afternoon nap to celebrate Halloween.


.

Pumpkin baby ... baby pumpkin

Okay. There was a change of heart, although it came very late in the day.

Work has been gruelling the last couple of days and there was no strength left when I came home, but the little darlings gave me enough hugs and kisses to bribe me into taking them trick or treating to three houses,and make me carve a pumpkin, with some great help from friends!




After the witch beguiled me with her smile and the little devil drove me nuts with her details, we went to Mitr's and K.'s place to carve a pumpkin.

A few thanks first :
1. To a baby boy A. who graciously picked this pumpkin from his school
2. To the boy's parents for leaving that pumpkin by mistake with Mitr and K.
3. To Mitr and K. for graciously letting us use their table for the "step by step" carving guide on that pumpkin
4. To San for being very patient with me today
4. and to Jr. and little one for pushing their tired and sick daddy to get back into the halloween spirit, no pun intended!




Now for the step by step instruction:

Take a pumpkin (the larger the better!), spread a garbage bag or some newspaper on the table before you start.




They sell stencils or pre drawn patterns along with carving kits (a book with 12 patterns, a scooper to get the goop from inside the pumpkin and two serrated carvers, one coarse and one fine all come for 5$).

However, the better thing to do instead of sticking the stencil on the pumpkin, would be to free hand draw the pattern on the pumpkin so you adjust the picture to scale. This takes some practice. In our case little A. must have picked a pumpkin he could handle with his tiny hands and that made it challenging to draw any elaborate pattern and then carve it. (the smaller the features get, the more difficult it is to separate the pieces and get them out!)




Do not use a sketch pen to draw. Use a permanent marker! Once you are done with the drawing, slice out a circle on the top and clean out the top.




Then scoop out the stuff from inside and make sure it is clean! If you leave beind the fibrous stuff, you will not be able to pop out the carved bits easily..







Then delicately start pushing the carving blade straight down (perpendicular to pumpkin surface) and start moving along the pattern. Once you finish a section, gently push the piece out and keep going. Remember, slow and steady...




Then slice out the inside on thick sections of the pattern so there is some translucency and put a candle inside!




Granted, this years piece was not even close to the ones in the last few years, but this is all that we managed in the 15 minutes at K and Mitr's place. (previous years stuff here, here, here and here!

Next year, we will give you a Mona Lisa...

On a side note, they should move up Halloween ahead by two weeks. All this global warming is making every halloween worse than the previous year when it comes to the weather!


.

When your pumpkin shrivels...

Just carve yourself a new one..

My workplace had a pumpkin carving contest. They gave us all a free pumpkin to carve. We also had the Halloween bash at Balaji's. Thought I could kill two birds with one stone and carved a nice one on sunday. By tuesday, the thing shrivelled and became so unrecognizable that it wouldn't be worth bringing anywhere near the display.

So I did one, last minute. Did not win, but got complimented by almost everyone. Made the kids very very happy when I got it home tonight.

Here it is..







Had to black out the spider on the surface so I wouldn't carve it out by mistake.

If only I could keep them from shrivelling so fast!


.

Pumkinography -2

Happy Halloween....


.