Boston in HDR.. and a few other shots

As most of you know, every trip presents subjects that are amenable to HDR (High Dynamic Range) processing. HDR does not appeal to everyone. In our house Jr. and my mom appreciate it. They think it brings things closer to "3D" or realistic view of detail. My wife and the little one think it looks too "made up" or artificial. 

To each his own. Nevertheless, here are some HDR pictures from the Boston trip..

but first, pictures of two plants that we don't see on California parks.. these two were on the sides of every walkway in the lighthouse parks.. 

This one reminded me of egg plant.. 

Clouds make a big difference on HDR shots of buildings. Not much luck this time.. 

another tip to self and others.. you get great shots in HDR just before sunrise or just after sunset.. 

A little movement of some folks and cars makes for better HDR.. 

Before I turn this post into a full blown "how not to do HDR".. this one was taken from a moving boat.. er.. moving duck.. that creates a better effect also.. 

City skylines will work only with clouds. Still worth a try, no?

Loved the Yacht's in the water. 

This shot had clouds.. but instead of trying Tone mapped HDR, I should have shot multiple exposures on this one and combined them into a single image. 

Same here.. but the trees made up for it..

Brick buildings really work for HDR.. 

as do Flags and really old stone buildings and shiny statues..

Photography is a continuous improvement project. You take the pictures, you process them a month later, try to connect your thought when taking the picture to what you are doing at post processing and hope to connect the right dots in your brain to get the result you were hoping for a month ago. 

The good thing is, you always learn from your shots and apply it another time. Some of these photos stand out in a black background. Have to figure out how to change background color for select posts on squarespace. 

On the plus side, almost felt like I was in Boston yesterday while going through the photographs. 

Duck tour, Museum of Science, Cape cod and the Plymouth Plantation

On our second day of the Boston trip, we visited one place. The Boston Museum of Science. It probably needs a few days to visit this thingy in all its vastness but we did what we could. We started the day with a "duck tour" of Boston that leaves from the Museum Parking lot.

It was a little over an hour of seeing the old Boston landmarks in and around the Museum from the amphibious vehicle (most notably city hall, trinity church and the shopping district) followed by a ride on the Charles river for 30 minutes. Given we went early in the morning, it was a nice ride on land and water. The kids got to sit at the wheel and drive the duck! It was a highlight for them..

The museum is similar to the California Academy of Sciences, with differnt wings for different areas. The big difference was the Pixar area. The kids and adults just loved this exhibit. 

The monster fans in our group were thrilled! 

There were also many exploratory areas and the kids actually learned a lot in one day. There were chicks hatching from eggs in front of us, things to measure on our body from heart rate to the arch of our feet! You could send all the data from your experiments to a site using your arm bracelet tag. It was impressive!

The little one seems to be all into science. I know things change over time.. but hoping this one keeps the light in her eyes alive for science.  She raised her hand to be volunteer for every experiment and enjoyed it.

Here she is moving the starry nights painting by shaking her hands on a setup that used Kinect to bring motion to the famous painting.. 

The kids had to use rubber bands on a frame with a cloth to create a surface that would bounce a ball the highest.. it had a testing Jig to test the height of the bouncing ball. They had stats from every bounce by day, by week with records on a computer. The kids were all set to beat the record but they lost. It was a great experience for them to see how their theories worked or not when applied in practice.

Then, there was the bed of nails, lightning bolts, animal and bird exhibits, shell collections, a nano science exhibit, an endless list to cover for a single day!

The only downside to this place is that the food shops close at 5:30 or so. We were hungry and tired after all that walking and had planned to eat at the museum before driving back. There was nothing to eat. So we ordered pizza, picked it up on our way home and watched the kids finish pizza like never before. 

It was a day well spent and the kids though tired, were very happy and excited and still talking about some of the things they saw at bedtime!

That was day 2. On day 3, we left for Cape Cod, bright and early. We made a good decision to drive as far as possible when traffic was low and drive back towards Canton and cover the vista points.

Turned out to be a great decision because the traffic had gotten much worse over three hours. 

We went all the way to Provincetown. Walked around the place and the pier and started driving back. 

The plan was to cover a few famous lighthouses and also spend time at the beach.

we made a small miscalculation on the beach part. It was Noon when we hit the beach. It was a very hot day and we could not even set foot on the sand. It was that hot. The kids went into the water for a few minutes but the rest of us could not sit there for long. So we packed up and headed for a quick lunch in the shade in the parking lot. One thing that was new to us here ? We cannot go park at the beach. You park 2 miles away and a shuttle bus takes you the beach every 20 minutes or so. There are long lines for this shuttle. So the wait could be 40 minutes before you get back to parking! 

After lunch, we went back towards Canton with a quick stop at the Plymouth (Plimoth) plantation museum. It was to commemorate the whole Indians meeting and helping the first settlers thanksgiving thing.. Someday there will be a musum to commemorate the settlers screwing the Indians was my thought. Then again, history is always written by the victorious, not the virtuous. Cynicism aside, the museum was a great attempt to recreate events and give a glimpse of what life was like 400 years ago in this place.

The kids saw how boats were made out of tress to go across the river..

grind corn, see how the Indians lived.. 

play games the Indian children played.. 

walk through an Indian village.. 

with folks in costume (and real Indian tribesmen) 

and English actors and actresses who recreate life on the village. They talk like it is 1650AD when you ask them questions. The kids were amused. They kept looking at us and asking "she is kidding right? she is just role playing right?"

This woman was challenged by the little one to see if she will slip up and make a single mistake to acknowledge we are in the current century, but NO! The conversation went on for 15 minutes and she was locked into 1600's. The kids were impressed with that.

That and a private birthday celebration pretty much sums up our trip. Will post the HDR photos soon. 

It was a whirlwind trip but like any of our other whirlwind tours (have started asking ourselves if there is any other way to tour any place), we managed to cover a lot in three days and come back just in time to start the back to school routine. 

This was exactly a month ago. Already feels like ages ago!

The kids are growing up fast. It is one thing that grandparent visits are few and far between. We don't even get to see our siblings often enough. My siblings are in Chennai and Boston. Wife's siblings are in Melbourne and Seattle. Family reunions are getting to be a rarity. Really looking forward to my Sashtiabdhapoorthy(turn 60) or Jr.'s wedding (whichever is sooner) to see everyone under one roof!

That is a lot of forward looking.. but cest la vie!

City of Boston- "same to same" but different

This is a travelog of our Day 1 of Boston touring in mid August. We visited Harvard, MIT and Quincy market and drove back to Canton. 

The drive to and from Canton in itself was quite an adventure. It is one thing to drive in peak traffic in bay area and a completely different thing to drive in Boston. The drivers are very unforgiving if they give you barely enough space to change lanes and you take a few extra milliseconds to move over. You get honked. My sis seems to have become immune to this and has also joined the herd there over time. 

A picture of me at Harvard square after 20 years. Cannot find the old picture from the half dozen shoe boxes filled with printed photos from the pre-digital age. 

Then came a paid tour of the University. Our tourguide was a junior at Harvard. When I asked her what she was majoring in, she told me that her major is "something something in something something and also somethingelse somethingelse in somethingelse somethingelse" and the words she used were all longer than something and somethingelse. I was like "whatever happened to things that could be described in one or at the most two words?"

She did do a good job of taking us through the campus and explaining campus culture, which famous person lived in which dorm etc. etc. She even went over admission procedures, some statistics in student population by demographic, superstitions of Harvard students (which says a lot) and other weird customs like running naked after last day of exams, pissing on statues, etc. etc. Those did not impress the four kids we had in our group and they were asking us "do we really have to go to college? do all colleges do it? can I go to a different college than this?" .. you get the idea!

We also got to watch some rich prospective Chinese supermodel students and a photoshoot.. Then it was time to eat our packed lunch on the lawns of Harvard. It was a beautiful and pleasant day. So we had a nice time in the lawn. They had filled it with chairs so that prospective students and the visiting parents could hang out there. 

Then off we went to MIT. The first piece of advice to new travelers is "keep your car parked at Harvard and take a cab to MIT or use public transport". Why? There is no freaking parking anywhere near MIT. we wasted an hour trying to find parking and the few lots there were all full (we were willing to pay 2x or 3x for it given we did not have much time left, but nothing was there). Finally we managed to find something and walked over to the MIT entrance. It was impressive. There is a separate post with HDR pictures.. so not posting those here.

We were about to go wander through that building when a lady from the visitor center told us that their tours were for kids who are in last two years of high school or college Juniors and seniors and their parents. Our kids were too young (we translated that as "we as parents were too young" and were happy) to appreciate that tour. Instead she said "we have a newly renovated MIT science museum which hopes to inspire young kids like this to take up science and engineering. why don't you go there?"

It was totally worth it. We walked another 15-20 minutes to get there. It was quite hot by then. The kids were tired but once they saw all the exhibits, they started playing, making measurements, watching videos, exploring things. It was a treat to watch the kids do all that. 

They watched a video of this Tuna robot that swims with real tuna. They were impressed. Once they saw all the hard engineering that went into it, they had pained expressions in their faces. I told them "using those iPhones and iPads has spoilt you guys. There is a lot of real work that goes behind what you are so used to getting". They said "yeah. yeah.. please don't start again with .. in those days when I was a kid.. dialogue". I rolled my eyes and moved on.

There were a lot of fun exhibits there that really appeal to kids. Holograms, experiments on strobe photography.. I still remember the NatGeo issue that was all about Doc Edgerton. They had a whole area for his photos. It was great!

Here is the little one doing some experiment or other. 

and for some strange reason "Lady Gaga".. with Jr. promptly posing in front of the photo.

Once we were done with the science museum, the kids were hungry. We wanted to go to Quincy market and get them something to eat.

If parking is hard to find near MIT, it is much more difficult at Quincy market. So we wasted another 30 mintues driving round and round that area. Finally we dropped off San with the kids and circled around while they all got some gelato. They got back into the cars and we drove back as though they got into some getaway cars. The gelato was very good but not exceptional. We have to visit this place another time when we have an extra day or two in Boston. 

Driving in Boston, with a GPS is still tricky than driving in most places in the US. That was our lesson from day 1 !!

Boston beckons..

Before school started, we had a four day window to visit my sister and family in Boston. We are spread all over the place. My parents with my brother in Chennai, India.. my sisters family on the east coast and us in the west coast. It is similar story on my wife's side. Her sisters family is in Melbourne and her brother is in Seattle.  So reunions and face to face meetings with family are rare. Entire family get togethers on any one side of the family are rarer. 

The best part of the trip for me was to see my sister and her hubby in their natural habitat, happy and smiling and watching the kids play together with their cousins. For the most part I was always roaming around, camera in hand.. 

It was a quick trip but we got some sightseeing done. Will do a separate blog post for some of the visits. 

Day 1: we visited Harvard. Tried to walk around ourselves. Got tired of waiting behind this Chinese group (the girls were all dressed like supermodels and there were cameramen with lighting , reflectors etc. taking pictures of them at every statue). Someone in the crowd told us they were "prospective students". 

San asked the cameramen nicely if they will move on so we could take a picture. He said 2 minutes and it went on for 15. So we decided to take the "official tour" with a student tour guide. Having wandered through Harvard multiple times many many moons ago and having danced in two of their ballrooms.. thought we could just wander around.. the paid tour was not bad. The student who gave the tour managed to keep it entertaining. 

Plus, we got our turn at taking pictures.. 

Initially the kids were all eager to touch this statue. Later they learned that this was the most "pissed on" statue in the universe and were running to find water and hand sanitizer!

Then we went to MIT and their science museum. 

Day2 was completely spent on a "duck tour" around downtown Boston and a trip on the Charles river followed by the Museum of Science. This was one great museum for the kids. Some highlights were the guy inside a cage getting struck repeatedly by lightning from a Van de Graff generator and a bed of nails..

Naturally, the Yogi had to volunteer for the bed of nails. 

Day 3 was spent celebrating my nephews birthday.. we also managed to go to Cape Cod and visit the Plimoth plantation museum. This reminded us of Ballarat in Australia. There were scenes that transported us to the 1600's like the one below.. 

Did I already say the best part was seeing my sister after a long time? I see her in my daughters face every day to the point where sometimes I call Jr. by my sisters name because she looks like a replica of my sis when she was the same age. When she is sitting on the ground and looks up with her iris on the top without raising her head up.. it is like watching my sister!

Jr. is a bridge between the genes of the two women on either side of her. Given they are all November borns.. it gets interesting from a tempramental stand point when they are talking to each other.

Moving on to other things.. 

We thoroughly enjoyed the trip to the many lighthouses in Cape Cod area.. and the best pic that stood out on the quick scroll through the downloaded pictures was this one.. 

We were smiling throughout this trip. No fights. No daddy getting lost on freeways in a new place. Found restrooms when we wanted them to appear while on the road. A peaceful trip after a long time. 

When I get a chance, will edit more pictures and post a travelog on Harvard, MIT, Cape Cod, the Museum of science and the Plimoth plantation.

Six Flags Discovery - A day trip

For the July 4th weekend, we decided to go on a day trip to Six flags with the cousins. It is 90 minutes away and in all our years of living here, we never visited this theme park.

It is a combination of Sea world, Disney's animal kingdowm and Universal all in one for a third of the price. Granted there are some give and takes for the price but the end result when you have a bunch of kids running around on a sugar high, a great place to spend the day!

We went in as soon as the park opened and stayed there till the park closed. Pretty much on our feet the whole time. Here are some pictures.

There was a seal show. The seals did a good job but the people in the show were too loud and annoying. The volume was too loud. Hope the seals dont hear the same frequencies we do at the same volume!

Then the little dolphin show. It was amazing. There was also another big dolphin show called Drench, but we missed it. The little dolphin show was better than the ones we have seen at Sea World. 

These 4 female dolphins were so synchronized and trained. They did a hoola hoop on their nose, threw a ball up with their "hands" and caught it in their mouth.. amazingly well trained.

Then we moved on to land animals. The tiger show was something we have never seen before. Five bengal tigers, jumping across 10 foot concrete slabs, climbing up 20 feet in one leap.. 

and diving into water and swimming! Have not seen that one before..  

 The butterfly garden was beautiful. Lots of large and small butterflies, well maintained, multiple security guards to make sure folks did not have both doors open to let butterflies out.. it was nicely done!

This one was the size of my palm!

Then we saw "feedom".. a Bald Eagle that was rescued. She posed for pictures a good 50 feet away. Was happy to get this "portrait" of her. Truly majestic and regal! On a good note, the extender and lens are fixed and seem to work okay after the repair.

The highlight though, was the fireworks. In all our life we have watched a lot of new years, disney, 4th of July fireworks. This was the best. Nice seats on a gallery. Very decent crowd. Great view of the fireworks launching pad across the water. The quality of the fireworks was also great. It was very well organized.

Tried  a slo-motion video of the first part of the fireworks on the new iPhone 6 plus. However not sure if it uploads as a slow motion video.. it is on my youtube as a separate video.. 

Was too tired to even take the canon out after the long day.. Sometimes the best camera, is the one you can hold!

Loved this day trip. It was really a pleasant day, less crowded rides, happy kids and parents after being on our feet the entire day. Cannot ask for much more!

Strongly recommended for a day trip!