More Tulips

More shots from our one hour visit to Roosengarde near Seattle.

We drove an hour, spent less than an hour there and drove back an hour on a drizzly day, but the flowers were spectacular and made it worth the drive and back.

Note to self: Next year we should go before the farm is topped off!

It was fun photographing Tulips when the air is so clear and the colors come out so vivid that you don't have much to do in photoshop!

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A little cheer

Have not had this kind of allergies in the last ten years. Slept through the entire day. Came out feeling a lot better.

The kids came home and saw my screensaver, which had the Tulips.

Me : Do you guys like it?

Little One : Not really!

Jr. : Not really!

Me : Why? I thought it is a great shot!

Jr.: The storm clouds in the back are scary.

Me : It was taken near Seattle and it was raining when we went there. You can see the water drops on all the tulips, can't you?

LO : Now that you have photoshop, can't you make the sky brighter or something?

Me : LOL! Sure we can. Was using Photoshop to get the features in the clouds out. Now I will go remove the features and make it brighter for you..

So, the first thing after they went to bed..

Old Photo..

New Photo..

Think Seattle could use a perpetual Cloud brightening plugin on Photoshop, at least for kids who are born and raised here in Silicon Valley!

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Roosengarde Tulips

The perceptive lull in blog posts is due to three things

1. Lot of travel. In the last 21 days have visited Austin, Phoenix, Seattle. While the first two were business trips, the last one was personal. We attended the Ceremonial South Indian Baby Shower for my SIL. It was a fun event with family and friends.

2. The increased travel which translates indirectly to yoga attendance has left me with some vulnerability for hay fever and allergens. Also flights at this season must be notorious for picking up germs. No amount of Emergen-C packets prepared me for the allergy onslaught this week. Had to leave work thursday afternoon and slept through the entire evening. In a fit of determination, went and did Yoga first thing friday morning only to be sent back reeling friday night. Right now the body is on a delicate balance and have waved the white flag with the pollen around Cupertino.

3. There was a lot of photoshopping between sickness and work in the evenings over the last week. Finally got done with that.

While we were in Seattle got a chance to visit Roosengarde, a place for Tulips. We missed the fields of Tulips by 3 days. They did have a few gardens still left uncut and we were lucky enough to get some snaps. Now that my strategy for Photographing landscapes has changed with the Photoshop CS5, you can see the preliminary results ..

More to come, pollen permitting!

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Progressing further on waterfall hues

Two more pictures after making three copies of the same picture and focusing separately on water, rocks and trees and a final merge..

Another technique that came in handy was to focus separately on things in foreground and things in background (with tripod) and merge the photos together.

Tried it on the Golden Gate bridge the other day from Sausalito and it works.. Same goes for waterfalls. Got this tip from Jay Patel who happens to have a wonderful website where he tells us how he took the photograph! A big thanks to him for the pointers.

Think that pretty much covers the falls in the two mile hike radius from the parking lot!

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More from Uvas

It takes me an average of 15 minutes a photo to work out the entire pictures..

Focus on green leaves and grass, water streaks, rocks, bridges etc, skylight on individual basis and then apply all the elements to the landscape photograph.

This is no different from the teeth whitening, red eye reduction, skin wrinkle removing, eye lash sharpening and putting these elements in a portrait photo.

Still feel it is too long. Have to figure out how to automate some of these tasks!

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