When in Rome.. get a mask

Don't do as the Romans do... you will likely die of lung cancer before you can see your grandkids. That was my first impression of Rome after getting out of the airport. We got to Hotel Canada which was a 10 minute walk from the main Train station in Rome. This was our only Hotel booking on the trip. The rest was Air B&B. We stayed at a hotel to be with San's sisters family who joined us for this leg of the trip.

The first picture in the blogpost always gets picked up by Facebook, Google+ etc.. so all these posts will start with my favorite family portrait of the day!

After a good nights rest, we got up for the breakfast which started at 7AM. Per San and Co-brother, the train was at 8AM. So we ate breakfast, had the kids put on sunscreen, took some photos of me doing backbends in the lobby and walked at a leisurely pace to the station and handed our tickets to the guy at the gate... all of which is shown in exhibits below.. (get used to exhibits for this series of blog posts)

He looked at us and said "Your train leaves at 7:54AM. It is now 7:56AM. It has already left! You will have to buy tickets again at that counter. There is another one that leaves for Florence in 30 minutes"

History has taught me many things. One of them is to not say anything about what has passed and just get to solution space. History has also taught me not to forget some stuff so it can come in handy for a blog post 10 years later..

History? There was a time when the kids were young and we were to go to Seattle to visit my BIL. We had booked the four tickets and let BIL know.. he looked at the email and told us he will be there to receive us at the airport on time. When we went to San Jose airport in the morning to check in, the lady at the counter looked at us and said "you are on a flight this morning, but it leaves from Seattle to come here! you booked Seattle to San Jose and back instead of the other way around.. We can cancel the ticket but it will cost you. There are four seats left on this mornings flight. Would you like to buy them?!" to which we replied "just get us the tickets to go there!" 

That experience taught me some valuable life lessons.. which came in very handy in the Roma train station. I told San to just go get the tickets and lets get to Florence! It was an interesting beginning to the trip. We are easily swayed by superstition.. first the delay at Zurich the previous day..then this delay.. was it a sign of things to come?! 

We got the tickets and were in Florence after a few hours. All was well again. Then we walked from the Florence station to the Uffizi gallery. Saw some interesting things on the way..we walked all around the Santa Maria Novella church

There was no paid jump the line tour as it was a Sunday and it was free for everyone. We checked out the line. Only 1200 people and a 2 1/2 hour wait.

So we decided to go to the Palace de Vecchio instead. This was another smaller Palace turned into a Museum but the attraction was the Vechchio tower which we had to climb at the end. It was an interesting climb and we got an amazing view of the City of Florence from the Tower. The paintings on the walls and ceilings just took our breath away..

When we came back down, finished lunch at the Ristorante Cavallino (really good food and nice ambience inside), the line to Uffizi was not that long.

It was a 30-40 minute wait. So we stood in line, got into the Gallery and walked for a good 3 hours through the gallery. Lot of great art work to take in that it was overwhelming.

These guys are marketing this all wrong. One of the galleries should be renamed as "Dickapalooza" and the other one "Boobfest". Those are actually apt descriptions..

We never realized Jesus was painted in this many angles by this many artists. Growing up in India and being raised on Hindu temple art, realized that Indian tempels have an advantage with many different gods, creatures etc. where there is a lot of room for diversity and creativity for statues and paintings. These guys all started painting when Christianity became mainstream and the Church allowed them to paint again (painting and statues were banned for a long time before the Pope realized that they were valuable for PR) and they had to paint Mary and Jesus with either Jesus as a baby, holding a sheep or being crucified. Given the limited options, they did an amazing job and I say that in all sincerity. 

There is a sense of grandeur that hits you in all these places.. lots of money and time spent.. Using my patented backbending Pano technology (I hold the iPhone and do backbends in every room to take Pano shots) give you a series of Pano shots in slide show.. which is probably why the family stayed clear of my sweat smell.. while all the tourists were really giving me "I am impressed" looks for my technique.

I would like to share two things I really liked in the gallery.. the first was one of my favorite paintings "the birth of Venus" and the second was a series of paintings by "the divine painter" .. they are amazing (see collage of all paintings)

There was only one problem with the Uffizi gallery. There were no places where you could just sit on a bench and give your tired knees a rest. So we were almost out of the gallery where there was a solitary painting in a round frame but with a sofa across it. The entire family crammed itself into the sofa and we were making jokes about how that should be named the best painting, just for the sofa. It was a painting of a father and mother teaching a child (not Jesus we were told).

A monk in a gray robe walked to the group and shouted at my co-brother "dont laugh at the cross". We were clearly not laughing at the cross. Where is the cross in that painting? We would not disrespect the cross. We go light candles in churches when we cannot find a temple to light a dia. So that dude was clearly having some issues with anyone laughing in the gallery. We walked around a few more rooms on the way to the exit in the ground floor and...

Finally walked out and wandered towards the train station. 

All the art that caught our eye (portrait format) is in this slide show..

Landscape format photos are in this slide show..

Stopped on the way at an outdoor restaurant and had an early dinner after watching some world cup soccer outside another restaurant on the way to the place..these were cheap restaurants which had folks outside trying to get customers inside with deals.. they advertised a full meal per person for under 10 Euros.. so we eenie meenie miney mo'ed and entered a place..the food was decent but the smoking was unbearable. Folks smoke right outside the place. so if you sit inside it is actually worse. 

Our train back to Rome was at 8 PM. This time we made it! 

It was a really hot day in Rome. My corn cap was still holding but the wife and kids complained that I smelled. It was like I was drenched in sweat.

A video to wrap up Florence.. 

Day 1, saw everything we had planned to see and had made it back in one piece. The next morning we had to take another local train to go on an all day tour.. we were on time.. no.. ahead of time on day 2!

To be continued..

Combining two interests

Yoga and Photoshop..

call it what you want, but these two pictures were a good time pass.

Jr. volunteered to take the individual shots. She said it was more fun to keep clicking and watch me do yoga than have to do the Yoga herself.. also she got to yell "body down, stretch forward" a few times. (had taught her to repeat the right keywords at the right times to motivate me). 

One of my teachers Matt always tells me "Sundar, you have to take it one millimeter at a time. Trust the process. It is a process. Go for progress instead of perfection". Every word is etched in my head. 

Being a process engineer by background, this Process is asymptotic and can be imperceptible on a day to day basis.. but, a millimeter a day adds up to 36.5 centimeters a year.. that is more than a foot! That assumes you come every day. Sometimes a weeks break can reset you more than 7 millimeters.. but that is another story. 

If you keep going and practice routinely, you can see the millimeters add up.

Will leave you with these two pictures of the half moon pose backbend 

and standing bow pose

both of which were incredibly difficult for me to do as a beginner and as a regular student in every class.. Was probably going back or forward only to the first step you see in the pictures. Today can do slightly better than the lowest bends in these pictures given all the poses we do prior to doing this (in heat) compared to directly jumping into it without any warm up at home. 

Matt was right.. those millimeters all add up over the years. 

All that said summer is always a tough time to keep up the regularity of the practice. So the process takes an erratic path and some semblence of regularity is regained in fall.

Was originally going to spot the 10+ things wrong in every pose, but today has been a good day. So instead I took a different approach, admired my handiwork on photoshop and decided all those things can wait. 

They are going to take a lifetime to fix.. and I am surprisingly okay with it!

Hope all of you got to do or try some Yoga on International Yoga day on Thursday. If you tried it for the first time, hope you had a lifechanging experience and you keep coming. If you got your regular yoga done, go you! 

It takes an inner will to be absolutely selfish to go do Yoga on a regular basis. The only way you can take care of others if you take care of yourself first. 

Split panel canvas

Over the years we have printed many of the photographs as canvases. Recently I have seen a lot of my friends have these "split panel" canvas. They look great and have a natural shadowning effect and your eye is drawn to it. 

Except for one friend who printed his own picture, most of them get stock photos printed. Then Facebook suggested (why I do not know) a split photograph of Ganesha and Buddha to be purchased from a nichecanvas company. Both me and San went through some of those designs and were amazed by the quality of the images. 

Then I told San "I like this, but would rather have one of my own photographs printed like this". She said "show it to me on how it will look before we order".

That is a challenge to put it in perspective because the image size and how big it is on the wall, the image color  and how it goes the paint on your wall and the effect of the fixed lighting (we are not going to repaint or redo lighting for this canvas!) are not easy to visualize for everyone.

Kept searching for split canvas prints and could not find anything for a few days where you could take your own photograph and do a 5 panel split. Costco does a 4 panel as do at least three other companies. Most folks do rectangular shapes split with the perfect rectangle. Some do a 4 panel stagger (two up and two down, but all four panels are the same size). 

Elephantstock gave me an option to customize it and clinch the deal with the family because I could show them how it would actually look on the wall. I could upload different photos and show which one would look great. Fortunately the background wall color on their default was close to our wall and they had it above a dining table too!

The trial photo as visualized on Elephantstock website..

and the real deal on our wall..

Everyone in the house has given it a two thumbs up as it adds a lot of vibrant color to the room. 

Someday we would be able to upload a picture of our own living room into a software, add the photograph and visualize it as a split panel with different sizes and then order it. That day will also come soon. At the end of the day there are many families where the photographer does not have the only or final say in the printing process.. especially when he lives with three women. so the burden is on the canvas printing company to "help" sell the idea!

ps. the original photograph was from Joshua National park visit during Labor day 2012. It was 3 photographs merged to create a HDR image.

Harvest moon

The moon is always beautiful and fascinating. Friday morning I opened the front door and the moon looked a little bigger than usual and it was full. 

So made Jr. wait for school and took a few pictures from our doorstep.

After a few mintues realized that using the extender would definitely give me a better shot. So put that on and took a few more pictures. It was a setting moon. 

Moon photos are always better if there is a backdrop that shows it in scale.. this one was just a handheld shot but it is beautiful in its own way..

Later that evening got to see a lot of posts from the previous night on the rising moon. Apparenlty it is called a "harvest moon". Had no idea. Have been living in a very busy and warped world recently. 

Just happy to be able to upload some pictures and be normal again!

Software tricks that compensate for hardware

If you hear about software compensating for hardware be it in imaging, networking, security, etc. etc. take it very seriously. 

Got to witness it firsthand over the weekend. We were at a friends place and one of our friends who works at Apple, whips out an iPhone8 and says "let me show you the portrait mode on this one". She takes a photo of me and with a single swipe on the icons in the bottom she was able to adjust the lighting on the portrait, AFTER the photo was taken. The background was also blacked out instantly and precisely.

It is interesting to note that Apps have figured out how to identify your face and put bunny ears on them, glasses and hats on your image and move them dynamically as you move your face. That is already 2016! as pointed out by my other friends. So the face and body recognition has come a long way. The speed and precision with which it is being done is what is amazing and scary! 

It takes me (and I do this with practiced ease) 3-4 minutes to cut an outline and create portait shots by blacking or whiting out the background. I use the smart cut tool in Adobe Photoshop CS5 and do a layer by cut followed by a solid layer and reordering the layers. 

The key issue is that the smart cut is only as precise as I can do it manually. My rush and crude job in the picture below shows that I did not get the boundaries right on my head line or right ear, which is because the background color blends with skin color or fuzzy boundaries are hard to delineate. The option is to gradually increase opacity between the layers. It can be done and it will take another few mintutes and can be automated.

How do you adjust the lighting post picture?! Think the iPhone8 is taking a page out of the Lytro book and doing multiple exposure shots (kind of like HDR but by adjusting focus) or is adding image sensor tricks to deliberately over expose or underexpose a group of pixels after it identifies the face prior to taking the pictures and is then able to play with this in the post processing. Dont know what kind of AI went into this, but whatever it is, very impressive!

Note that when I do smart cut and add a black layer, there is no lighting effect. I can also recreate part of the effect by creating a custom Vignette option. But I cannot change the local lighting on my face. It will always match the original. 

The "smart cut" being done with software is what is incredible. This is going to put portrait studio kits out of business. 

The SLR camera and lenses are temporarily safe. It still takes a good zoom to capture pictures of moving subjects against a plain backdrop and CS5 to adjust it. Maybe when you import the photos into an iPhone8 those photographs will be edited with a button click. Photoshop options and customized macros are going to be folded into the iPhone. You dont need those anymore soon..

One idea that I had was this.. Build a housing for an iPhone where the phone's camera focuses on an internal white board inside the box which replaces the plane of the full frame sensor in an SLR. You directly put your 2000$ lens on to this small box and the phone connects to an EF lens, telescope, binocular etc. etc. 

In the mean time photography enthusiasts like me will still lug around a heavy bag... 

Technology is moving very fast. Faster than a common person with respect to that technology field is improving. I am in hardware and see a scary progress in software. A software person is probably seeing the same thing in hardware space. The collective improvement is something neither one can anticipate or expect. . . it beats the average expectation by a wide margin!  The happy go lucky average users (all of us) don't see the larger picture of where this is going!