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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Mt. Tamalpais - a day trip

We took a trip through the Mt. Tamalpais preserve in San Francisco two weeks ago with San's uncle.

From there we visited Point Reyes for the third time in ten years. This time it was a thursday and could take a lot of stitch shots, thanks to it being just me and San's uncle at the lighthouse.

First we went to the vista point on Mt. Tamalpais where you can see stinson beach and the entire lagoon! (we lucked out because the visibility was really good)

Then we went down back on route 1 to the Point Reyes Seashore preserve and after driving for another 45 minutes we got to the lighthouse. For the first time, tried a composite box stitch shot. Came out okay. Will have to learn and perfect this. (note that you have to eyeball where your last shot was on the Rebel XT! The old powershots will actually split the screen and show you the first shot to align the second one)

You line them up..

Hit Merge on Photostitch ..

and abracadabra..

From the lighthouse we went to Drakes beach, one of the most beautiful places we have ever been to!

Although Chitappa was in two consecutive shots, it stitched him in one piece! Lucky shot..(there are 14 images from which this one was made)

This sweep is from 17 images..

The rock side goes all the way to the ocean

and juts out like some dinosaur leg. Reminds you of Great Ocean drive in Australia.

We also saw a lot of birds and animals we do not see usually when we go on these trips. They were probably out because it was a weekday and there was no traffic.

We saw foxes, hawks, eagles, elk, deer, woodpeckers, cows!

These are not the greatest photos, but because there was this one lane road with no stopping, we had to rush it.

Happy cows come from California. Truly believe it now. If I got to graze on a hillside with such scenery in the background, I would be a happy cow too..

All said and done, a day well spent. Strongly recommended for a one day outing if you live in the bay area!

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Point Reyes Lighthouse

If there was a place that captures "Are we there yet?", it is the Point Reyes Lighthouse.

You start seeing signs for the lighthouse a good 21 miles away and the adults and kids start asking "are we there yet?" and after driving and driving and more driving, you finally get to the "ledge".

Then of course there is the climb down to one of the most amazing lighthouses we have seen! How they built this thing on the mountain face is just beyond me.

The coastline is just spectacular from the top of Point Reyes.

Here are the stitch shots.

The lessons here... when aiming to complete the grid with a shot of the sky, the focus went hunting.. should keep it to manual focus as well going forward.

Please note, these are not taken with a camera with "stitch mode" where you get to see a side by side screen split on your LCD! (the old S30 used to do that and stitching was so easy). These pictures are being taken with a Canon EOS 400D and I have to remember where the previous shot ends and the next one begins. Just using the old software to glue them together! Now that all the technicalities are out of the way... here!

Here is the vertical stitch that missed the sky because of focus hunting (there were 12 photos.. 3 vertical sets of 4.. but!!!!! incomplete.. someday when I compile all these composite shots, there will be a "best known method" that works consistantly)

The magnificent California coastline...


and finally, the girls on a bench on top, enjoying the breeze!


A memorable trip. Should go there again in nine more years and see what the experience is like!

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Nine years later....

Sundar and San go to one of the first places they visited as a newly married couple. A place which forever holds great memories...

We had a great time. Well behaved kids, nice drive, perfect day!

There will be more pictures (stitch ones). Current laptop memory seems to be the limitation. Also the whole lighthouse climb and back was enough exercise!

Was worried that the little one might make me carry her all the way back.. But she did 260 of the 300 steps back on her own and made daddy very proud!

As we were going there, we told the Jr. and the little one about how this was a special place for us.

Jr. : We were not there when you came here before?
Me : No. It was only me and mommy. We were just married.
Jr. : We were not there when you got married!
Me : That is right
Jr. : (continues to extend the first statement with a corollary).. if we were there, then you would not have gotten married , right?
San : probably NOT!
Me : ROMSLOLWDOWRORO!

that was Rolling on my seat, laughing out loud while driving on windy roads on route one!

Kids, sure change your life, almost always for the better.

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Yellowstone in Panorama..

Yet again, the appeal for a new Canon SLR were rejected due to budget constraints!

So, on came the Stitch mode in the old Canon S30.

I started taking sequential shots to be joined together using the software!

To me this is a poor mans wide angle feature. Considering that I always had to trek anywhere from 0.2 to 1.5 miles to certain viewpoints by myself or with my brother-in-law (with the constant threat from the Mrs. to get back soon to the little ones waiting at the trail head!), some shots were not as successful as the rest.

On the whole I did get some good ones. You cannot even find out that I stiched them unless you do a 400x zoom.

Yellowstone basically has :

1. Free roaming wild animals in a 2.1 Million Acre National park. There is a a road that loops inside the park with trails going off from this road to various points. These include trails at the rim of the canyon which I did not dare explore! The wild animals are a topic for a separate post. Apparently the largest number of species in any single park in 48 states (do not know which parks have more than this.. alaska is one bet). The bisons by the way are bigger than a small car (think larger than Ford Pony, Suzuki Swift, Maruthi 1000!) They weigh on an average 2000-3000 lbs and can run three times faster than a man at peak speed! I saw one run and it scared the daylights out of me.

2. Hot springs, geysers, smoking mountains, etc. In essense, thermal features. Out of the worlds 20,000 or so thermal features, more than 10000 are in this one national park! So we had to pretty much watch where we stepped. There was always a chance that you step on a thin crust of earth only to find out that your feet are going to be scalded by steam and Hydrogen Sulfide!!

3. Lakes, rivers, creeks, waterfalls, cascades etc. especially since we were always at an elevation of 6500 feet or above! I will post at least one sample of each in a videoblog. This was the first time I saw a real cascade. It was breathtaking!

4. Tons of Desis and Chinese people during a long weekend! There were as many Indian "mami's" in Sari's and Salwar's as there were Bisons and Elk! I am sure the Bisons are equally surprised by the Desi mami's as the Mami's are by the Bisons! I still haven't figured out what it is with Chinese and Indian folk who decide to take their parents and kids to national parks for long weekends!

So, without further ado..

The lower falls viewpoint is fantastic. You can see the river meander through the canyon..

Inspiration point basically has a view of the Yellowstone Canyon and a rock outcrop that projects but is almost not visible, just like the one in Indiana Jones and the last Crusade!

The mammoth hot springs are a sight to behold. The top part is still growing and consuming trees in its wake. You can see what happens to the trees when the sulfur rich water eats them.

Here is another close up stitch version.

Here is the view from the bottom of the mammoth springs. This is just one side of the bottom area that still has water flowing down!

This picture is named old faithful, but is really another hot geyser in the upper basin! I am glad my camera survived the fumes as I took this set.

Finally, swan lake. A serene pool of water with snow covered mountains in the backdrop.

It is going to be one tiring week, or what is left of it! Until more pictures, so long...

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