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..


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Books Books Books

We go through an average of 8 books per child per week. Mostly thanks to the local public library.

As usual the books are spread on the living room carpet and the house looks like some trinket store on North Mada street in Mylapore during off season where the store owner spreads everything too thin to make it look like he has many items.

An inventory of sorts is done by the kids (mostly the little one) to verify that all books that she picked were indeed checked out! Then the books are all put back in the bag and are brought out in the order in which they were prioritized. Top seeded books come out first!




Keep telling myself to write reviews for some fantastic books that come our way and some books that are really not tasteful for 5 or 8 year olds that end up in that section of the library or at least drop a short note in the blog about the books.

Never seem to take that note to self very seriously...

These two are so good that they need a mention.

The first one is "Miss Nelson is Missing". A fantastic book (which also happened to be the play that the little one got to see as part of her school Kinder field trip). She can read the entire book (has probably memorized it by now).

The funny thing about this book was that it was part of the blue book project for Jr. two years ago! However Jr. never understood the surprise in the book, or forgot about it. She had a "oh.. so that is what happened" light bulb moment last week on doing a second read.

The second book is "Sometimes I like to curl up in a ball". This is a rhyme or "intro to poetry" book that is very well written and beautifully illustrated. The wombat is incredibly cute and both Jr. and the little one love this book.




There should be a service (maybe it exists already?) where all books for kids get two questions..

a. how old is your kid?
b. on a scale of 1-10, how does your kid rate the book?

with that info we can figure out the ideal age group that loves the book and how much that age group loves that book on a scale of 1-10..

On a similar thought blockbuster/netflix etc.. have a rating scheme for movies. If only they had the age demographic to go with it we can go straight to

"movies rated by people in your age group" ranked by number of stars... that way the movies favorited by young teens won't be recommended to me strongly by Blockbuster!


As usual, I digress for purely selfish reasons.

These two books are great for 5-8 year olds. Now that is a wide spectrum these days considering 3 years is a big gap in that age group when it comes to book trends based on our observation in this house!


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Ikebana show - Wow!

Did not know much about Ikebana till today. Still don't, but at least got introduced to the concept at the Flower show at the local community center.

It was awesome!

The arrangements looked picture perfect to the point where Jr. and the little one kept asking "Are they real flowers or fake?" over and over again.













Are these real daddy?




how about these ones. are they real?




I learned something new today. My kids are uncomfortable around "perfection" or the notion of "perfection"..




Was taking pictures of the arrangements and the flowers in the arrangements and in the process learnt a lot about changing zoom lenses fast. Finally decided to do multiple rounds of the show...

with wide angle
with telephoto
with macro!

see results..

this one is with the sigma lens maxed out at 200mm taken at ISO 1600, f6.0, 1/60 sec.
Autofocus makes a big difference..




this one with the 50mm macro lens at ISO 1600, f5.6, 1/60 sec. The macro lens was on manual focus and it has a real small depth of field but where it focusses, it is unbelievably sharp and detailed. Should have taken a tripod with me and it would have been better..













The next bunch of pictures are taken with different lenses..




The bud and the flowers are either zoomed in or magnified with macro. You can see the image differences..













For those local readers, it is open tomorrow also. Definitely worth a visit.

A big thanks to the organizers and participants in the events for this visual treat.



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Intricate detail

In nature.. (a chrysanthemum bud)




and man made (a hand crafted Indian doll - the head is as small as a dime)




the world is just different when you got nice glasses....


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Look for a bee and almost find a butterfly...

an accidental subject!


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Navarathri Golus - 2010

This year's nine day celebration went by real fast. There was a three day time lapse with heavy pain killers that made it look like a six day festival.

The previous years golu collections are in this link. I know a lot of folks look for how their golus have evolved over time using the blog posts. Thank you all for allowing me to chronicle the fantastic doll displays.

The spirit of this festival is not in the doll displays. It is watching your kids have fun. Go to every one of their friends houses, play, eat sundal, dress up, sing, dance, collect goody bags and just enjoy being a kid!

A few photographs that capture this essence

The elaborate jewelry that kids wear with great love..




The joy of comparing goody bags..




or the joy of making photography really challenging for daddy (had to chop grandma's face because she was not amused by the kids making the photo session difficult!)




Now for this years golus. The HDR ones are obvious (most shots are a composite of 3 images std , +2 eV, -2 eV)and you can see the difference it makes.





































This year was fun. Next year as the golus morph in shape, size and color... will have a different way to capture the displays.. maybe go B&W to create that 1980's nostalgia? Go take close up of dolls in a set instead of the entire display?

Your ideas are always welcome!



Note to self: Just like we do an oil change or scheduled maintenance on the van two weeks before any long weekend for an anticipated road trip, always get your dental checkup two weeks before navrathri! It is a bad idea for Sundar to be left out in Sundal season..



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Lamphead

Manual mode shot of a swan on top of a traditional Indian lamp in a Navrathri golu..




Tonemapped and noise reduced with Photomatix trial software..




Had a wisdom tooth infection that prompted a short notice surgery and extraction of both lower wisdom teeth. Recovering nicely so far. Have been forced into a "silent" fast (mouna vrath)for the last three days. Looking forward to a nice meal today.

The golu trips continued with San, MIL and kids attending some golus during the week. Tonight we will round up the rest of the golus and post pictures.

Until then..


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Golus are the perfect subject for HDR

See this one below!



Note, if you take a picture with a flash and capture this really good golu with a wide angle set to 18mm, you will not get the details in the shadows. You can even see the shadows of the beads in each step with the HDR image..

Loving it so far..


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Rhyme

enough said!

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Navaraathiri . . . thookam Yedhu.. ohhh

If you have not seen the Kamal movie MMKR, the title won't make sense to you. My apologies.

The last week was hectic with San being out of town till Thursday. Let us say that I pretty much went into survival mode as Daddy trying to juggle work and the kids.

When it was time for a much needed rest, there come the Navarathri celebrations and they started Friday.

So the afternoon nap still eludes me.. but this year thanks to the nice lenses taking photographs of Golus(doll displays) is a lot more fun!

This is a photograph of a lamp shot with the macro.




So far we have seen nine golus over friday evening to sunday evening. Have another 6 more to visit for sure between now and next saturday.

The pictures of all the golus will have to wait till next weekend. For now, work calls...



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HDR with kids

HDR photos involve getting multiple exposures and combining them into one photograph and then tone mapping them to get details in bright and dark areas.

At least that is my one line understanding of the concept.

The best results seem to be for images shot in early morning or early evening where shadows play a big part of the shot and there are possibilities for increased hues and color saturation. Works best with monuments in the foreground, brick houses, waves etc.. you get the idea?! No, go see these photos..

You usually do not see photos of people in HDR because it is difficult for the subject to stay still while taking three shots (especially ones with long exposures).

The kids are extremely co-operative and have posed for >10000 photographs put together . .

So, here is a first attempt. Downloaded a trial version of PHotomatix to do this. Very very impressed with the software (better than the free version of FDR tools), but doubt the Mrs. will allow the real version to be purchased with the 99$ price tag. Nevertheless, a great tool to understand HDR better..




Suggestions and ideas for the kid-HDR learning part 2 are welcome!


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All in a day..

Conversation 1 with Little one just before bedtime

Me : please eat fast and eat more! Only then you will grow big.

LO : I want to be a "mouse kutty"! (and makes a small rat face by pouting her lips. She wants to be a baby mouse)

Me : No. be serious. you have to eat fast. tomorrow morning I want you to eat fast so that we will be on time for school.

LO : Daddy, you know something.. I am not eating because if I don't eat, then I won't become bigger.. if I don't become bigger, then I don't have to get married and go away. I want to stay with you always!

Me : !!!!!!! thinking "We have a big big problem". You can stay with me forever.. even if you get bigger and get married. You can bring your husband and make him also live with us. no problem. just start eating okay?

Conversation 2 with MIL:

MIL : What are you taking a photo of now?

Me : a peppercorn!

MIL : I cannot even see it without my glasses from here...

Me : that is the beauty of this lens. The peppercorn looks like a small pockmarked planet when I zoom into it with this lens.. totally amazing. this makes small things look big!

MIL : Do you have a lens that makes big things look small? if you do, use that and get me a new facebook profile photo!

Me : !!!!!! (hmmm.. maybe I can get another lens for this?!)

Conversation 3 with Jr. earlier this evening:

Me : so tell me what happened in school today?

Jr.: there was an election and we all got to vote on a ballot for student council leaders, sports secretary etc.

Me : this is your first time voting?

Jr.: yes. 3rd graders to 5th graders vote. But you have to be in 4th or 5th grade to stand in an election.

Me : so how did it go

Jr.: the people who were in the election had to put signs out everywhere in the school. then they held the signs and shouted "I am responsible. vote for me.." and stuff like that. it was very noisy.

Me : so do you want to stand in the election next year? You aren't exactly responsible but we have one year to get you there! why don't you be sports secretary?

Jr. : well, we have to put way too many posters everywhere

Me : I will help you with it.

Jr.: if you are sports secretary, you get to go clean all the tropies, pump up all the balls and do more work. If you are president you get to announce things in the speaker and ring the bell everyday.

Me : in other words you are saying "why work to get elected and do more work?"

Jr. : exactly. I don't see why they want to shout all day, get elected and do more work.

Me : hmmm.. right now I am not exactly sure if I should coach you on leadership skills or commend you for staying on the sidelines. we will talk about this once amma comes back home. By the way, who did you vote for.

Jr. : I heard them do all the shouting and we had to pick 4 choices out of 5 for all positions. So I picked all the girls.

Me : thinking "great, so the vote pretty much got divvied up along gender lines!"
don't you think it is unfair to just vote for them because they are girls?

Jr. : No! they are also saying they are responsible!


Me : !!!!!!!

So much for democracy. God bless America.




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HDR

A HDR (High Dynamic Range)image got by superimposing 3 macro shots with 4 second exposure and f2.5, 4.0 and 9.0. Shot without flash using a Disney birthday cake figurine.. (this section shown in photo is around 2 centimeters. whole thing is 2 inches tall)

Just wanted to try it to see if it will bring out the details in the shadows. It does, but not the best use of the macro or the HDR freeware.

Need to find a dead fly.. and take a picture of its head. The live ones are too fast to capture...



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