Bloody eclipse..

One minute I am on an international call. Next minute there is a lot of commotion outside the house...

Turns out a large gathering of people in our neighbors driveway decided to watch the eclipse. Given the vantage point was a few steps from our house, decided to capture it right there.

The moon's redness was almost gone by the time I got set up..

Then the clouds moved away and got a series of shots which ended just a few minutes ago..

do click image to see the larger version.. 

It was fun catching this on our neighbors driveway and chatting with folks at the same time!

Boston in HDR.. and a few other shots

As most of you know, every trip presents subjects that are amenable to HDR (High Dynamic Range) processing. HDR does not appeal to everyone. In our house Jr. and my mom appreciate it. They think it brings things closer to "3D" or realistic view of detail. My wife and the little one think it looks too "made up" or artificial. 

To each his own. Nevertheless, here are some HDR pictures from the Boston trip..

but first, pictures of two plants that we don't see on California parks.. these two were on the sides of every walkway in the lighthouse parks.. 

This one reminded me of egg plant.. 

Clouds make a big difference on HDR shots of buildings. Not much luck this time.. 

another tip to self and others.. you get great shots in HDR just before sunrise or just after sunset.. 

A little movement of some folks and cars makes for better HDR.. 

Before I turn this post into a full blown "how not to do HDR".. this one was taken from a moving boat.. er.. moving duck.. that creates a better effect also.. 

City skylines will work only with clouds. Still worth a try, no?

Loved the Yacht's in the water. 

This shot had clouds.. but instead of trying Tone mapped HDR, I should have shot multiple exposures on this one and combined them into a single image. 

Same here.. but the trees made up for it..

Brick buildings really work for HDR.. 

as do Flags and really old stone buildings and shiny statues..

Photography is a continuous improvement project. You take the pictures, you process them a month later, try to connect your thought when taking the picture to what you are doing at post processing and hope to connect the right dots in your brain to get the result you were hoping for a month ago. 

The good thing is, you always learn from your shots and apply it another time. Some of these photos stand out in a black background. Have to figure out how to change background color for select posts on squarespace. 

On the plus side, almost felt like I was in Boston yesterday while going through the photographs. 

Duck tour, Museum of Science, Cape cod and the Plymouth Plantation

On our second day of the Boston trip, we visited one place. The Boston Museum of Science. It probably needs a few days to visit this thingy in all its vastness but we did what we could. We started the day with a "duck tour" of Boston that leaves from the Museum Parking lot.

It was a little over an hour of seeing the old Boston landmarks in and around the Museum from the amphibious vehicle (most notably city hall, trinity church and the shopping district) followed by a ride on the Charles river for 30 minutes. Given we went early in the morning, it was a nice ride on land and water. The kids got to sit at the wheel and drive the duck! It was a highlight for them..

The museum is similar to the California Academy of Sciences, with differnt wings for different areas. The big difference was the Pixar area. The kids and adults just loved this exhibit. 

The monster fans in our group were thrilled! 

There were also many exploratory areas and the kids actually learned a lot in one day. There were chicks hatching from eggs in front of us, things to measure on our body from heart rate to the arch of our feet! You could send all the data from your experiments to a site using your arm bracelet tag. It was impressive!

The little one seems to be all into science. I know things change over time.. but hoping this one keeps the light in her eyes alive for science.  She raised her hand to be volunteer for every experiment and enjoyed it.

Here she is moving the starry nights painting by shaking her hands on a setup that used Kinect to bring motion to the famous painting.. 

The kids had to use rubber bands on a frame with a cloth to create a surface that would bounce a ball the highest.. it had a testing Jig to test the height of the bouncing ball. They had stats from every bounce by day, by week with records on a computer. The kids were all set to beat the record but they lost. It was a great experience for them to see how their theories worked or not when applied in practice.

Then, there was the bed of nails, lightning bolts, animal and bird exhibits, shell collections, a nano science exhibit, an endless list to cover for a single day!

The only downside to this place is that the food shops close at 5:30 or so. We were hungry and tired after all that walking and had planned to eat at the museum before driving back. There was nothing to eat. So we ordered pizza, picked it up on our way home and watched the kids finish pizza like never before. 

It was a day well spent and the kids though tired, were very happy and excited and still talking about some of the things they saw at bedtime!

That was day 2. On day 3, we left for Cape Cod, bright and early. We made a good decision to drive as far as possible when traffic was low and drive back towards Canton and cover the vista points.

Turned out to be a great decision because the traffic had gotten much worse over three hours. 

We went all the way to Provincetown. Walked around the place and the pier and started driving back. 

The plan was to cover a few famous lighthouses and also spend time at the beach.

we made a small miscalculation on the beach part. It was Noon when we hit the beach. It was a very hot day and we could not even set foot on the sand. It was that hot. The kids went into the water for a few minutes but the rest of us could not sit there for long. So we packed up and headed for a quick lunch in the shade in the parking lot. One thing that was new to us here ? We cannot go park at the beach. You park 2 miles away and a shuttle bus takes you the beach every 20 minutes or so. There are long lines for this shuttle. So the wait could be 40 minutes before you get back to parking! 

After lunch, we went back towards Canton with a quick stop at the Plymouth (Plimoth) plantation museum. It was to commemorate the whole Indians meeting and helping the first settlers thanksgiving thing.. Someday there will be a musum to commemorate the settlers screwing the Indians was my thought. Then again, history is always written by the victorious, not the virtuous. Cynicism aside, the museum was a great attempt to recreate events and give a glimpse of what life was like 400 years ago in this place.

The kids saw how boats were made out of tress to go across the river..

grind corn, see how the Indians lived.. 

play games the Indian children played.. 

walk through an Indian village.. 

with folks in costume (and real Indian tribesmen) 

and English actors and actresses who recreate life on the village. They talk like it is 1650AD when you ask them questions. The kids were amused. They kept looking at us and asking "she is kidding right? she is just role playing right?"

This woman was challenged by the little one to see if she will slip up and make a single mistake to acknowledge we are in the current century, but NO! The conversation went on for 15 minutes and she was locked into 1600's. The kids were impressed with that.

That and a private birthday celebration pretty much sums up our trip. Will post the HDR photos soon. 

It was a whirlwind trip but like any of our other whirlwind tours (have started asking ourselves if there is any other way to tour any place), we managed to cover a lot in three days and come back just in time to start the back to school routine. 

This was exactly a month ago. Already feels like ages ago!

The kids are growing up fast. It is one thing that grandparent visits are few and far between. We don't even get to see our siblings often enough. My siblings are in Chennai and Boston. Wife's siblings are in Melbourne and Seattle. Family reunions are getting to be a rarity. Really looking forward to my Sashtiabdhapoorthy(turn 60) or Jr.'s wedding (whichever is sooner) to see everyone under one roof!

That is a lot of forward looking.. but cest la vie!

The lens returns

Recently, my Canon extender just gave in and dropped the 70-200 lens to the ground. In my impulse to stop the lens from hitting the ground, I put my foot out to "catch" it. It was a painful mistake. First the foot took a few days to heal. The lens was not broken but just dented. 

Sent the lens and extender to Canon service to get fixed. The lens came back and it would mount on the camera body okay. The extender which was supposedly fixed, had the same problem. Canon made me send it back again to be checked out by a "senior technician".  The whole ordeal cost 500$ for a problem caused by a Canon part malfunction. Unfortunately, the warranty on the extender expires in 3 years and this was year 4. Even if it was valid, it would not cover the more expensive lens that goes on the extender.

Finally got a chance this evening to put the lens on the extender and see if the whole assembly worked like before.

Looks like it .. 

This little one went for the same flowers every ten minutes or so. 

Got it on the third cycle. 1/1600 th of a second, f5.6, ISO 3200 and still cannot catch the wings. 

Will try 1/4000 or 1/8000 tomorrow and see how it goes. Hopefully the bird will visit when it is brighter outside.

Warning to folks like me who buy 300 dollar extenders in an attempt to not spend on a 400mm zoom lens. Bad idea. The extender fails, your lens is toast! 

Just talk to the CFO at home, use my painful example and get yourself that 400mm lens!

Nevada - the rest of the trip - aka Casinos

We spent a day and a half in Casinos on the recent Vegas trip. Given we went with kids and one adult who downright refuses to enter places with Cigarette smoke (me), it was a tough call. 

So we played it safe and walked through the main streets within these Casino's.

First we went to the Venetian. San and me are visiting this place after 15 years. Our first observation was that the Gondola ride price went from 5 bucks to 20 which is not proportionate to the 2x every 10 years rule. The Casino's always win, even when it comes to Gondola rides. 

The interior was mind blowing for the kids. They have not seen anything like this in their lives. They were very very impressed. 

Then we went to Paris Paris and did a bunch of things. All those got overshadowed by bumping into (literally for me) actor Prabhu Deva. After that the conversation stayed with the actor for another hour or so!

Lunch was at the Rainforest Cafe in MGM! We had a reservation and we barely made it. The smoke filled air on the way to the restaurant within the Casino made me lose my appetite. Fortunately, I sat next to a blower of some kind which helped recirculate fresh air in the corner of the restaurant.

The food was simple and good! The ambience was great (except for the smell of smoke that would not go away). There were aquariums everywhere and the fish in the tank were gorgeous..

Later that afternoon we spent some time walking in the strip to get sunlight. Then there was the M&M store! It was great fun for the adults and kids! We need a store like this in the bay area. We have 4 regular potential customers lined up in our house already.. They let you make your own mix of M&M's, that too with rare colors. I was a kid again for an hour running around with the kids grabbing select colors. 

We had another 4 hours to spend before catching the Illusions Magic show! Took a tram to the Mandalay bay and saw the Shark Reef. Given that we have been to way too many zoos and aquariums where we go through a tunnel where sharks swim overhead, this one was not the best but they did have a few nice exhibits like the Piranah's and Giant sea turtles.. 

The first few exhibits were "meh".. there were crocs, lizzards, snakes and a Komodo dragon that looked like it needed CPR. We lowered our expecations and that helped for the remaining 30 minutes as we walked through the other exhibits.

Apparently it is not okay to put more than 40 of these toothy fishes in one tank. They were eating live goldfish when we were there.. This is the first time someone actually explained Piranahs to us. Apparently they are exaggerated in the movies.. they are not always that hungry!

The shark tank itself was nice. Not the largest we have seen but they had three large Sawfish and a giant turtle. (could not get pictures of them because they were in the far end of the tank and very shy)..

It was a challenge taking pictures in the dark and the 5D Mark ii still does a great job in low light!

They also had red and green florescent jelly fish and some gorgeous lionfish. 

Then there was the magic show, "The New Illusions"! Jan Rouven was amazing. The escape acts he did really make us sit on the edge of our seats and go "how the hell did he do that!" We did not realize that 90 minutes flew by. It was that entertaining. I wanted to get a picture with him after the show but the kids were hungry and we wanted to get back to the hotel for dinner. So we raced back to the parking lot. 

The next day we spent half a day at Circus Circus at the arcade area. The kids tried their hand at various games and mostly did not win anything. The adults played a game or two and won things for the kids. The circus acts in the center of the arcade were good and entertaining.. but again, the villain.. smoke! There was a gambling area right beneath the arcade. Wish they had put the arcade on a separate air system so the kids could be spared the smoke. . . 

Given the whole Casino trips were unplanned, we still had fun!

Had to come and do Yoga back to back to get the smoke out of my lungs and the smell out of my nostrils. Between Casinos and National Parks, the family now has a clear and unanimous choice!