Six becomes eight

If you have been following me having fun with Photoshop.. kind of reached the limit on the last two.

Redid the one with six kids.. which translates to "spent another 15 minutes on this one to perfect edges and blemishes you can catch when zoomed to the max" 

and got this one with me in it. The third set of three was unusable. There was simply not enough room in the couch to seat 9 of us!

That one kind of almost got out of hand because the white balance on the two shots got messed up. Not because of the camera setting but because the sun moved outside the window in the 30 minutes between dress up sessions. Took me a good 30 minutes to try and match colors on my face to the closest and then merge the raw images. 

Bottomline? "It is difficult but doable! and if you can spend even more time it would have been posible to match the tones on the two versions of me".

On a funny note the kids have been going through an emotional upheaval of sorts. They miss their mom but don't know how to express it..

This morning though a funny thing happened. The little one woke up and said "Daddy, I had a nightmare. Thought mommy is back already!"

Me "don't you mean a dream.. not nightmare?" 

She didn't get the difference for some reason. She breaks out into tears for no reason and slams the door in anger at her grandparents, again for no reason! Later this evening she admitted "I miss mommy!" 

A minute later she says "But... BUT, I get to sleep in your bed from the beginning.. I have been planning that since mommy told me she was going to India!"

So for now, she is happy to sleep on my arm.

We are finally done with the Navrathri rounds tonight! 

Five becomes six..

Got the hang of it now.. 

Can go to sleep now! 

The many Paavaadais of 2012

Paavaadai is the name for the south indian frock, usually made with silk and gold embroidery and this blog has a picture of my two little darlings in their new Paavaadais almost every October festival season as they dress up and go to the Golu's of friends and relatives.

This year having been very busy at work, did not get a chance to do the pictures before or after the golus on most days. So today we had a portrait session for 45 minutes. 

Begged them to co-operate for a merge photo and they did 3 dress changes in 45 minutes and we precisely engineered the seating positions.. the first set is below.

Just getting warmed up. Will post the rest over the week. There was one overlap that cannot be overcome on this set.. will have to figure a way around that tomorrow.

A big thanks to my darlings for co-operating!

More later.

Blue Angels

We did not really enjoy the blue angels show this year as much as last .. but did get a few great pictures with Alcatraz in the backdrop. 

Last year we could not find parking and were outside the city hall. This year we succumbed to the city fleecing and paid a good 30 bucks to park near Pier 39 so we could watch the planes go between the Pier and Alcatraz.

The crowd was overwhelmingly a "smoking" crowd and there was nothing we could do. If it is one or two folks you can request them to kindly move away, but if it is a group of 15-20 people around you lighting up, what do you do?

You hope the show gets over fast and you get a few good pictures!

 

and my favorite.. a shot that was accidentally taken by tracking the planes towards the sun. Managed to salvage it using the HDR toning utility in photoshop that gave this a cool effect!

Next year we watch them live on TV! 

Pelicons

Two Photographs..

The first one is a Pelican with an "a". 

This shot captured at the Shoreline park a couple of weekends ago (when things were very different with life) during a picnic... 

The next one is a Pelicon with an "o". Yes, you got that right. The title was no typo. This shot was taken last sunday where a pelican was trying to act like one of the blue angels.. When you have a 70-200 on a 2x extender the thing is more than a foot long and taking hand held shots is a challenge. To top things off the gulls and Pelicans would come flying in from the sides and mess up my focus! 

The only bonus? This shot of the Pelican was as crisp as the shot of the airplanes (which could be crispier..). A lot of people got conned by the Pelicans. The blue angels would make a noise and everyone would turn to the edge of the Pier and out would come a Pelican and the crowd would burst out laughing.

This year somehow the fun was not there watching the Blue Angels perform compared to last year. There was just way too much of a crowd and too much second hand smoking for one day!

Next year we might not even go..