A weekend in HDR among other things...

Last weekend my sister in law visited us and we went on a local bay area tour of sorts. While the people pictures end up on Facebook.. the Nature pictures and select pictures of me.. end up here! 

There is always an incentive to write a blog post to chronicle local travels, no matter how many times we have visited the place, if we have something new to show.. 

 While editing the pictures where yours truly is smiling, one thought kept coming to my mind.. I look like someone.. but it is not my dad. Six seven years ago, I used to look like a carbon copy of my dad when he was that age.. this time the smile was different. The percentages of "knowingness: sarcasm : resignation" was different.. It was like the basic composition of my face had changed to a different part of that ternary phase diagram. After staring at it for a long time, it struck me! 

I am slowly turning into the next version of my only maternal uncle aka "Ambi Mama"! At first I thought, it must be the receeding hairline, but NO! There is more to this than hairline. Going to take a shot of me with my rudhraksham and towel and match the color balance and you will see soon.. 

As always.. one thing leads to another and before you know it, a post that started off as a weekend in HDR suddenly changed to my facial resemblence to Ambi mama.. Let's get back on topic.. 

 HDR pictures.. 

 This was really one beautiful evening to be out there. Full moon, perfect weather and most important of all, great company! 

This time I took my camera, but did not have the filter kit.. Next time we visit, going to throw a dark ND filter in front of the lens and take a longer exposure shot to blur the waves.. 

That weekend hopefully starts off some travel with family and is a harbinger of better pictures to come this year! 

Spring is in the air

The little one made a spring hat at school. Ended up too small for her head. Guess Kindergarten engineering did not account for any shrinkage factors during the making of the paper hat.

It is really nice and colorful. She was reluctant to pose because it did not fit..

Now that hat gets to languish in the garage till its one year expiry date and then goes bye bye

The photograph on the other hand gets to be revisited every now and then.

We made it to our favorite hangout, the Natural bridges in Santa Cruz last week to let the kids play in the sand, watch the tide pool creatures and just get some sun. The water was still cold enough to make me stay off it.

Here are some photographs..

Break is over and the kids start school again tomorrow. The kids had to stay content with trips to Livermore and Santa Cruz, but they did enjoy the time spent at home with grandma and caught up on sleep. Lots of sleep.

The routine begins tomorrow!

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Finding Santa in Santa Places

Every year on Christmas day, we seem to hit some place (usually a beach town) which starts with Santa!

Maybe it is our subconsious seeking out the old man with the beard in the white foam on the beaches, we do not know.

This year, it was a trip to Santa Cruz to visit the Natural Bridges and the Monarch Butterfly preserves. We were in two minds, what with the rain pouring down in occasional bursts all through Christmas eve, but we decided to do the drive anyways.

It was with mixed success. The storm had blown out most of the butterflies and the rest of them decided to close their wings and huddle together. When they do that, you cannot really distinguish them from the leaves on the tall eucalyptus trees. Save for the occasional lone butterfly that was fluttering aimlesslly, we did not catch any magnificent site. Well, we at least know where this place is and will make another visit next year.

On our way out, we went down to the beach to see the natural bridges. Oh, what a sight it was! The sun went behind the clouds and made the whole place look something out of this world. It was a photographers dream, for a full four minutes before the rain came down and forced us to run to our vehicles.

No photos of the butterflies, except this pink one!

The magnificence of the Natural bridge! There were two bridges, but one collapsed recently.

Playing with the lone gull that was scouring the foam

Jr.'s first photo using the Digital Rebel. Not bad!

Finally, the stitch shots...

From atop the Butterfly preserve, looking down to the beach..

6 shot stitch

16 shot stitch. If only I could get the sun shining through the hole under the bridge. Now that would be some shot!

Here is to Santa Cruz!

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Mama goes to The Mystery Spot

There is this place on the way from San Jose to Santa Cruz, called The Mystery Spot.

It is a weird place where there is some strange force acting upwards that you can physically sense. Apparently there are 18 such places in the globe (9 mirror sites through the center of the earth?!) and since most of such places are over the ocean, only two or three are offered as a sight seeing location on planet Earth.

This spot has been around for tourists to see, since the 1940's. For some strange reason, more Desis have seen the mystery spot than Americans. This is based on a statistical survey conducted by the BOGUS Institute's chief, Dr. Sündar Narayanöhe, who has personally visited "The Mystery Spot" 8 times.

Having been on the main tour four times, and having waited for many 45 minute tours to finish so he could take his turn with the visitors accompanying him from India (this was before they enabled online ticket purchses), Dr. Narayanöhe has observed that 9/10 people in all tours are Desis.

Usual tourist spots in the bay area, especially over long weekends, have the distribution of 40% Indian, 40% Chinese and 20% other, except in Disneyland where the ratio would be 40/30/30. The lack of non-desis at "The Mystery Spot" as it is officially called, is in itself a Mystery, concludes the eminent researcher!

That said, "Mama" or "Chota Mama" as he is known in family circles, visited the bay area last weekend and posed the billion dollar question, "What can you show me that we don't normally see in India?". This from a dude who has just been shown the Empire State Building, the Smithsonian, the National Air and Space Museum, etc. etc.

The equations were cruched in our heads and the point of singularity was clearly going towards, you guessed it !!!!

So off we went and at the end of the trip, "Mama", or "Mug Shot Mama" as he is now called in family circles, came out with a smile on his face. "That was incredible, do you know what is really going on there?", he asked a bewildered Dr. Narayanöhe, who started by drawing some equations, lines and arrows on a paper napkin, invoked the name of his favorite physics teacher "Balu Sir", scratched his head some more and replied, "The BOGUS Institute will take this as a personal request and submit its report, soon.." and told himself "the hell if I know!".

We present to the reader, some interesting photographs from the trip.

This is what is known as the "Om Boohu" shot!

People as well as trees get a nauseus feeling and go dizzzzy, at the spot. This photo shows a confused "corkscrew tree"..

The next two photos show how Mama (who boldly voluteered where many desis have volunteered before) and a little kid clearly demonstrate that the height difference between them changes drastically, when they switch places around the spot. The spot runs through the girl watching them on the concrete T, who by the way endorsed the phenonmenon for real.

In case the previous photos were not convincing enough, here is Mama and the eminent researcher, whose eminence is all the more prominent with the new haircut, which in turn has revealed a "mystery spot" on his scalp where all the hair seem to be confused.... demonstating the effect first hand. People develop a 17 degree lean when they are inside the spot on level ground. "Amazing! Now I know how Michael Jackson did that tilt thing in Smooth Criminal! Possibly blue screen work at the spot!" chipped a kid from behind as the tour progressed.

and finally the mystery behind Mama's name change in family circles!

Ta da..

If you are a desi visiting a relative in the bay area, chances are you have visted this place. If not, spread the word! It has become a must watch site for madisaar mamis and mottai thalais alike.

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The tourguide becomes the tourist ?!

One of the books that stuck to my memory from the college library reading days is "The Stone Leopard" by Collin Forbes. In that book, the line that stood out was "The hunter became the hunted!".

Along similar lines, someday I plan to become a tourist for the very same places I take visiting relatives, in my role as the family tourguide.

San's uncle was here this weekend, after attending a conference in the east coast and on his way back to India.

"Two and a half days in the bay area, maximum coverage!" declared the wife. I took up the challenge and inspite of one of the worst wheezing attacks in recent memory on Friday night, went on to drive to the following places:

The livermore temple (this was not a tourguide thing, just the usual drive and back)
The Mystery spot (my 8th visit to the place, 4th on the tour)
Santa Cruz boardwalk
Route 1 from Santa Cruz to Golden gate bridge with stops on the beaches.. (yes, we ate the packed Tamarind rice and curd rice on the beach, and yes yes, it was delicious, as usual!)
The golden gate bridge (somewhere in the 25-30 range on this vista point)
Crooked street (same thing.. and not once have I actually managed to take in the beauty of this street because as the driver I am always hanging on the steering wheel for dear life on the way up)
The chocolate factory (this, like the temple is just plain fun)
Carmel by the Sea (6th trip)
Monterey Bay aquarium (4th trip)

400 miles of local driving with lots of help from my friends Pseudoephidrine Hydrochloride, Azelastine Hydrochloride, Loratadine and of course Salbuterol who came through and helped me in some tough spots!

There will be some detailed posts with pictures of this hectic travel experience.. but leave you here with the customary stitch shots of the Golden Gate Bridge.

This is one tough place for a merge shot but is also a good candidate for the shot. Even if you have a lens that goes to 18mm, you cannot capture the panorama from the vista point. That said, you need multiple shots.

Let me explain why is it a difficult place for stitch photos. Too many moving things, the water, the boats, yachts, the vehicles on the bridge, not to mention you and the camera (it is very windy at the vista point). You are better off trying this when :

a. there is good visibility

b. there are not that many vehicles on the bridge (at least avoid the huge trucks which move bigtime between your continuous shots)

c. avoid big barges on the water which also move perpendicular to the bridge. If they move parallel to the bridge, it does not matter much.

d. Use a tripod and swivel the camera across

e. The biggest thing I realized...do not do this in AUTO mode.

Go focus on the bridge in auto mode,
find out what the camera thinks is the best aperture and shutter speed,
then go to manual mode,
reduce the aperture by one stop to allow more light in (go to a smaller number),
decrease the shutter speed by one (ie., if auto says do 1/250, then do 1/400th of a second)
and then sweep the camera and shoot in manual mode.

f. Do NOT change the zoom throughout this sweep. That messes things up big time.

g. If you are worried about barelling (when you stitch a photo panorama, you get a barrel shaped composite picture, with the ends becoming short and the center long), shoot with the camera rotated 90 degrees. Take more shots, vertically and stitch them!

Now, hope all that advice works for you. I plan to take my own advice next time (there will definitely be another next time) and do all of the above instead of just some of the above.

ps. Don't try to upload them in blogger with the original size. You will probably get an internal error! Resize and then upload, save yourself some pain.

Now, my dear friends are inviting me to a party. Got to run. Ciao!

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