One of my favorite subjects

The Moon..

When we were enroute to Joshua tree last friday, learned that it was a special night. The "blue moon" as it is called is a rarity.

Once in a while there are two full moon days in the month of August and this second full moon in the same month is also refered to as blue moon (However the real blue moon reference was created by the moon becoming blue under a volcanic ash cloud somewhere in Europe in the middle ages.. that I remember from the good old quizzing days in school)

Digressed as usual.. coming to this special moon.. 

Stopped on the side of a freeway exit on Route 5 someplace near Panoche Road and took a bunch of shots with the 70-200mm using the 2x extender. Tried the HDR stuff but it doesn't work. Maybe there are some manual tricks that need to be done to get rid of the blue and red ring that comes up in PHotoshop when using the merge to HDR option.

See for yourself. The default shot is not bad as my family was oohing and aahing over this photograph.

However when you do the HDR merge on three shots you get this..

Granted the detail in the highlights and shadows pop out but the edge is now off. There is a ring around the edge that has blue on one side and red on the other. Have a dozen shots of the moon in sets of three and it happens on all of the triplets no matter what the default setting was with respect to shutter speed or aperture.

f8, f11, f13, f22 all end up with same ring! Does the moon move that much within two seconds to cause this? Technically this was on a stable tripod shot and even if there are miniscule shakes thanks to the trucks on the freeway, the software is supposed to align the moon based on features in the photograph anyways, right? There is not much to align in three photographs which have a moon in the middle of a black background. So what gives?

Have to pore over a few internet pages from expert moon photographers to figure this one out. Not going to get a blue moon anytime soon. But if you know of ways to fix this in HDR, do let me know.

Call me obsessive..

It has been a hectic week at work but the good news is the cold is gone in spite of skipping Yoga the entire week. Finally managed to go back to Yoga today after an entire week of long distance driving, 18 hour work days and beating a cold.

The kids have recovered completely as well and that is good. 

In the middle of all this, dedicated 90 minutes every night to parallel process work and Photoshop to get 70+ HDR images of the Joshua Tree National Park trip. That was 210+ images condensed into 70 images. Most of the images are a composite of 3 images (a normal, over exposed and underexposed image) to grab component details in bright areas from underexposed image and details in the dark areas from the overexposed image!

Are you with me so far? No?

See the picture below the way PHotoshop does it. I give it three images with -2, 0 and +2 eV and it does the initial superposition. Then I get to work with the slider bars to create the right image, i.e., the way I thought my eye saw it at that time!

Do you see how the sky details are clear in the darker picture, the tree details are clearer in the brighter picture and they have to be ported over into the picture in the middle? 

That way you can see it the way your eye sees it!

Finally the photos are done and have been uploaded into two Galleries. One is the HDR Gallery and the other one is the people photos. 

Have not found a way to get comments into the individual photos yet. Will work on that tomorrow!

The little one who sits on my lap during the editing process encourages me to go overboard on the synthetic HDR look. That is why the previous post had an artificial look for the trees. Guess she wants every thing to look like Dr. Seuss land in Universal studios.. psychedelic colors, too much vibrance, over saturation, less detail.. etc.

Daddy is more into photorealistic HDR. So most of the snaps fall into that category!

Hope all of you enjoy the Photos.

Joshua Trees

We spent the long weekend at Joshua Tree National Park. Why would the weary Narayanan family to to a desert in 100 degree heat? Well, we have seen most of the other parks and the one park which is new to the family and to the parents is this one. 

So off we went and spent almost two full days there. The flora and fauna in this place is unique and so are the rock formations. 

Walking around Joshua Tree national park is like walking around Jurassic park! So surreal that the Photoshop HDR pluggin actually does justice to what it really looks like. 

The tips of the cactus glow in the morning and evening sunlight. The rocks and boulders seem to have been picked and placed to perfection. The Joshua trees seem planted in formation and do not look very natural. There is an eerie lifelessness and the occasional movement of a desert squirrel or lizard that reminds you of the hidden life in this unique desert forest. 

We made it to a few hikes and made it back in one piece without the parents or kids going through any major events! That was a big plus. 

There are more than 500 photos (all combo photos in HDR) which need a lot of processing time. After driving for a good 8 hours this is what I could manage to post tonight as a sample.. 

Yes! Did shoot the caterpillar in with exposure bracketing using a feature that comes in handy on the Manfrotto tripod (widen the legs to make the camera come real close to the ground.. you can even put the camera upside down on this tripod) using the 50mm Macro lens. The real caterpillar is 1 inch long! The kids spotted a whole bunch of caterpillars on the ground when we went to take photos at one of the scenic spots and it turned into a HDR attempt.. 

Seriously, this is how this place really looks as the sun casts shadows on the trees and cactus on the floor. The rocks actually look like this as well in the setting sun! 

More to come in the next few days as more editing time is found.

We had a great time with the parents, kids and cousins. The trip was not without its nervous and lucky moments. I got a cactus ball between my heel and sandals and it was a painful experience extracting the thorns out. We very near ran out of gas and did not notice trying to chase the sun as it set through the mountain ranges and barely made it out to the park entrance before the reserve ran out! 

Strongly recommend this place to photo enthusiasts. Please do try to go in April when the oasis have water in them and the cactus and Joshua trees are blooming!

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.