When it comes to creating a "build up". . .

After a long time, decided to update the Cooking section of this website. Given that the MIL is back in Seattle, it is time my hands took a ladle or two up. . . 

Wanted to have a nice banner picture for this page and roped in the little one for a trick photo shoot. Explained the concept to her.. "Daddy will look like Shakti except with cooking utensils instead of weapons?" 

She immediately got it. After deciding which things to hold in Daddy's ten hands, we paired up the things and placed 5 sets of utensils on the floor. The camera was set up on the tripod and ready to go. 

The little one had to click, come remove things from my hand, replace them with two other utensils and go back and click... then repeat this three more times! After downloading the photos and doing an initial merge she was disappointed. "I didn't do that good a job appa.. there are some places where you moved!"

Told her that it was not her problem and that she did an outstanding job. It just needed some quality time for Daddy with Photoshop.

1 hour later.. we present to you Daddy in his Vishwaroopam pose in the kitchen..

Never before has a buildup for cooking seen this in the history of cooking or "buildup".

Pretty sure I will be diagnosed as OCD becaue most of the time was spent in getting the shadow right. 

The most important thing in all of this?

The little one is going to be one hell of a photographer and eventual photoshopper. En kula kozhundhu has been identified!

Tall trees tell many tales

The redwood forests are amazing. 

Here are some pictures from the trails along Avenue of the Giants!

Our sincere hope is that the last of the original forests in our Northwest don't die because stupid politics and the interests of a select few trump what we leave for our future generations. 

Super "saadha" moon

Did go out to take a photo of the supposedly 14% larger 30% brighter "Supermoon"..

It was already close to 9 and the moon was up quite a bit, but it was a "meh" moment.

We were not at some setting where I could bring out the size with a nice foreground. All I wanted was to use the 30% extra brightness to take an easier shot.

It was not as great as hyped. Will try again today closer to moon rise from some nice location for foreground..

Alaska animal sightings..

On our recent trip to Alaska we saw many animals on the Denali Bus tour, on our way to and from Denali, at the wildlife conservatory in Turnagain Arm.. 

You could watch animals cross the desolate roads.. closest we saw this was at Yellowstone. The area of the preserve has to be really huge for this to happen is our guess!

Here are some of the pictures .. 

That was Dall sheep on the steep cliff faces, elk, grizzlies, moose, musk oxen, an owl, Ptarmigan which happens to be the state bird in Alaska, wood bison which is endangered and caribou! 

We are definitely going to plan another Alaska visit for a longer time in a couple of years.. Apparenlty you need to have 20 photographs published to be able to apply for a permit to go inside the park to photograph wild life and it is a lottery system of sorts. Will get there in time!

Options Galore!

Another attempt at salvaging a picture..

The original which was over exposed (my mistake for not changing settings after switching lenses)

My first attempt to cover it up by using artistic filters and adjusting the shadows and highlights..

The "Sankara Sastry" in me refusing to accept the "artistic" fix and doing a proper job of layering the image and blending it. .

At this point the image gets incremental improvement for every 10 minutes spent n the picture.

This goes to show the importance of many things..

a. make sure you check your settings everytime you switch lenses from Telephoto to wide angle so that you don't have to photoshop in the first place. 

b. always shoot raw images so you can pull this off in post processing

c. If you have overexposed sky and you cannot take bracketed shots (too much movement like this boat, wave etc. ) create smart object copies and blend images! 

This was worth the effort.. when printing the larger version of this image on an 8x10 it came out pretty good!