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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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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