No insects were harmed..

In the production of this photograph.. 

as it was already dead when we found it in our driveway!

Still Jr. and the little one were worried it was alive after I showed them the quick preview shots on my camera display..

The canon 50mm macro can make it looks like it brings dead things back to life!

Birds and bunnies

Was in Austin again this week. So that explains the little ones usual rant on my business trips. She asked me "You have so many people working for you. Why can't someone else go to Austin instead of you?"

She has all the makings of a fine manager in the future!

This time I went only once to the Austin Downtown Yoga place. These guys crack me up everytime I visit. Last time it was the "Happy hump day" .. 

This time we are about to do the Standing bow pulling pose and when there are new students in the class the teacher usually goes over the grip by saying

Take your right hand and put your palm out and imagine you have money on the hand. Say "Mama give me money" and then without bending your hand move your leg up and grab your ankle with the outstretched hand!

Austin is a republican stronghold. Guess what the teacher asked the class to repeat at the beginning of the pose?

Obama give me money! 

I thought it was hilarious. 

Made it back thursday and so far no sickness. My previous two Austin trips ended up with me getting sick on my way back. Not this time. 

Was back in the hot room this morning in San Jose. It is a beautiful day outside and to pass some quiet time in the afternoon, sat in the van with the windows open in our driveway to try and capture this one hummingbird that was consistantly seen drinking from the Jacaranda tree in our front yard. 

After sitting in the van and enjoying the breeze for an hour caught the bird on camera. 

As an added bonus, out jumped a bunny from the bushes and posed for me up close! Now we really have a bunny invasion in Cupertino. Going to call animal control today!

It is still great out there and we plan to spend the rest of the evening outdoors..

Love summer!

Parks and more Parks

My parents have settled in comfortably to their new routine in the last 20 days. This is their old routine modified to constraints we impose on them here. They have been very sportive about it. The 9 year gap since their last trip, their brushes with death with severe medical conditions, living  a few years where other folks have to drive them around in India..... these have softened the impact of issues that were huge on their last trip.

We have been taking them with us to local grocery stores, costco, etc. and to the few birthday parties that we have been invited to in the last two weeks. Most of them have been in parks as the weather outside is great. My mother loves it although she cannot walk. She had triple knee surgery thanks to some really bad (read contaminated) operating theaters in India and if she walks for 30 minutes, she is done walking for the day.

Nevertheless, we are happy to see her walk from the parking lot to the picnic bench and back. Dad is just so happy to be able to walk in a park instead of our own backyard, which in his words is still a big improvement compared to the traffic and bustle in a major metro in India.

Took a few pictures in the park today. This is the first picture of them I am taking in a year.

Going back to shooting high key shots, something I love !

There is no photoshopping here, no background. Just flood the exposure on the background to white out everything and still get the face.. it is like a process optimization exercise in semiconductor world where you find a narrow process window between exposure, shutter speed and ISO to get this magic shot!

Time to wrap up the weekend and get back the busy routine!

ps. My apologies for messing up Blog readers. Still learning on Squarespace. There was a checkbox on top that changes the post from WYSIWYG to Raw HTML and I had the wrong setting.. 

Eclipse

Not the best shots, but did start capturing the solar eclipse and had to give up in the middle.

Why?

The kids insisted on "bike riding as a family". So all four of us decided to ride a bike during the solar eclipse. It was interesting because we saw so many people in our street with video cameras on tripods and special glasses staring at the sun.

They probably all thought we were a weird family to go biking and ignoring a once in a lifetime event. Little did they know about my frustration.

People scared me about two things

1. Do Not look into the sun directly
2. Do not take pictures with the camera by trying to zoom into sun as it will damage your image sensor..

First I tried to cover the lens with some dark polythene. That created a large flare. Then decided to use my extender (which is a 2x) on my 70-200 mm f2.8 L (this is a 2000 dollar piece of glass) and initially San was giving me the look and saying "I hope you know what you are doing because you are not going to get any camera replacement money from this family!"

The thing becomes pretty bulky at this point, so a tripod is a must. (Incidentally, shot the hummingbirds kissing using this setup.. you can stay far enough from animals, birds and snakes and get shots with a 400mm setup as long as it is bright outside).

Now the extender puts the 200 f2.8 at 400 f5.6! Gets the sun pretty close. So I used a remote trigger and instead of staring at the sun directly, stared at it indirectly and took shots at 1/8000 seconds and f22 with an ISO set to 100. Pretty much pushed the exposure to bare minimum to get these shots. Also used a gap between branches in a tree to get the shots so that the Image sensor did not overload. Then cropped the images.

Next time there is a solar eclipse, going to leave home, hit the mountains and get some welders glass or the right polarizing and ND filter combinations and take photographs! (My CEO took some really neat shots using this method. He had to adjust the white balance. I didn't have to, but the effect is much better on his shots!)

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A new home?

After toying with the idea of getting my own site and free myself from editing constraints on blogger, have decided to check out Squarespace!

They came highly recommended and are also a notch above the rest of the web hosts when it comes to Customer service. In the last 24 hours they have responded to me within the hour every time a query was sent!

Please check out this site and give me your feedback!

It will be a long process to sort out blog posts, entries etc.. but this is one of my hobbies and it is more than a hobby. So who knows, we might put a portfolio of images on this site and start covering Birthday parties and weddings, when time permits.

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