Memories..

BIL sent me an old picture while cleaning up his stuff from 2008.. 

It was a keeper! While the background distracts you, the smile on our faces is priceless!

Spent a few minutes in CS5 to get this one.. 

Wish to bundle her up like that now! 

See what I mean by they are growing up sooo fast?!

Thanks to my BIL for saving old pictures. Have purchased a negative scanner as my Christmas gift, thanks to Costcos 24 deals of Christmas in 24 days.. Have literally 1000's of negatives from 1989 to 2002 in India and in my closet. Can scan a lot of those before the film starts to decay! That should be a fun Christmas project to try and set up.

A photograph can only do so much justice..

It was a great idea to go work today instead of doze off at home. No pills, visited the hot room and now feeling a lot better. 

So the thought of visiting those 3000 odd photos from last week came to mind. 

After spending 2 hours on just 6 photos calling it a night.

At the end of the day a photograph even if done in Photorealistic HDR doesn't recapture the wonder of Death Valley!

This one photo below is of the Ubehebe crater. This is a composite of 7 shots stiched together. The individual shots were taken at 17mm in portrait format on a Canon 17-40mm L lens using a ND filter in manual mode with manual focus, then cropped and adjusted. I tried pulling the whole thing off with auto exposure bracketed shots in HDR and that did not work. Guess even my Mac quits at some point..

Sure there are not that many pictures like this of Ubehebe out there. We are on a rim of a crater which is around 100 feet! you get a feel for the size of this by looking at the people on the right edge.

The ND filter kit was part of the birthday present specially for this trip. Made a big mistake. Like a person who wears spectacles for the first time forgeting the specs at odd places, I left the ND filter kit on the crater rim. 

If you happen to read this blog and fate has it that you were on that crater rim between 11/21 or thereafter and you happen to have found it.. please email me.. 

Was almost in tears when we realized this at our next stop later that evening. By that time we had already driven a good 60 miles away from the crater and visiting it again in hopes of recovering filter kit was moot!

There were few good shots with the filter in the 24 hours of use like this sunset over the freeway. We didn't realize the sun sets before 4:30 in death valley! A lot earlier than the previous day when we were out of the valley. The valley is below sea level and the lowest point in the US is right here.. should have expected that!

or this one from Mosaic canyon..

These two photos en-route to Darwin falls at Panamint area..

and finally a butterfly that was everywhere in the desert.. they were even there in the salt flats. Don't know how they survive the harsh environment. 

Learned one more thing in the editing process. The canon photo stitch utility does not work on photos taken at 17mm! So figured out how to stitch them in Photoshop. Starting to really love Photoshop now. For all that Adobe hating because of Flash Player.. there is a new found love for Adobe because of CS5!

More photos tomorrow...

Double trouble

San is in India. The kids are bored.. we can explain.

Have been doing the dressing up the kids and taking them to visit Navrathri golu routine since Friday evening and so far we are on schedule!

There will be a post with all the Golu Photos in a gallery in a couple of days.

Yesterday while visiting a golu, the kids were asked "So how is life without Amma being around?" and the answer was very short..

"Fun!"

There was shock all around at the answer.

Then the little one went on to explain the logic. "When amma is around, she keeps giving us chores to do and keeps telling us what to do all the time. Now that she is not there, we are not all the time being told to do this and do that. So it is fun, but it is also boring! So we miss Amma"

A couple of things to learn from this :

All of San's screamings have been providing pure entertainment value for the kids. So she might as well stop.

As for me, not telling them what to do is not exactly interesting. I am boring. So it is time for me to give them chores...

This morning we had an idea to take photographs of them in their different paavadais in one shot.. They are both protesting on the value of three dress changes for a 30 minute photoshop! In the meantime, I wanted to see how the concept will work. So while they were fighting on the couch, fired a few snaps and merged them.. 

It seems to work pretty well.

Let us see if we can sit 9 people on this couch without an overlap...

In and around the house.

Two photos to share from today..

Both show the need for perfection and ideas for improvement..

The first one with the Photography

The second with the subject.. should have been able to hold this pose without moving. Was having Jr. click the shutter button once (had set it to continuous shooting mode with a self timer). The 2 second timer delay kept throwing me off. One thing we don't do in Yoga is open our mouth and talk. That is forbidden in the Yoga room. So it was odd for me to get into the pose and let Jr. know to hit the shutter release. My fingers practically look like they are coming out of the screen simply because we are able to see the detail in the shadow. There was not much editing in this one.. simply merged three images taken in succession!

Both will be improved, starting tomrrow!

My parents really like the way the HDR images are created and sit with me and watch my photoshopping experiments. They have started being vocal critics as well, which is good and bad! 

My mother had the same request as my MIL.. Both were private requests but so identical in choice of words, it is too hilarious not to share.

"You are really amazing at this photo editing thing! Can you not do something to make me look thinner? Your photographs make me look too big. Know that it will only show what is there.. still a guy with your ability has to be able to do something, no?!"

If I quit my day job, trust me, the first thing on my "to do list" is to develop a "Thin Plugin" for Photoshop which selectively takes any shape and converts it to the closest 36-24-36 (if those are still numbers today's women are shooting for!).. May be way off as yours truly is still living in the past...

Here to having grandparents around! It is very precious..

Happy weekend everyone!

More HDR

Two key players in the house were not captured in HDR yesterday.. so they got their chance today during the feeding time. 

San will not pose.. So the plan for tomorrow ? Self Portrait in HDR. Hopefully the Yoga will help me take a deep breath and stay absolutely still.. who knows, maybe go +/- 3 or 4 eV bracketing?!

We saw a gorgeous sunset today with some amazing clouds. Will try to capture that tomorrow. Looks like this weeks pet project to take my mind off things is HDR.