Oakland zoo - Revisited

After a break of two years, we visited the Oakland Zoo today. We had a really great time!

Here are the teaser photos, taken with my new love, the Digital Rebel!

of birds and...

animals, or kids trying to be animals..

I promise you, this post is not like a Jackie Chan movie trailer where the best action sequences are completely shown in the trailer and you go watch the same sequences with filler material in the movie. Brings back memories of watching First night, first show in Alankar theater a few decades ago! Boy, I am growing old..shoo shoo, you bad thoughts.. Now back to the topic! You will see some more nice pictures when I upload them tomorrow!

Home made food, great company, nice weather, cooperating kids, time well spent! All said and done, it was a great day!

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Kaakaas and Kuruvis..

Kaakaa is crow and Kuruvi is sparrow in Tamizh.

We did not see those, but the local flora and fauna of California and we went to some really scenic places to see them.

Mono Lake and Yosemite.

Travelling with small kids is highly over rated. Especially if not to Disneyland, Lego Land, Sea World etc. If Half dome were to wear a costume or the Tufa towers had a mascot with a DVD franchise, things would have been a lot better.

We learnt a valuable lesson over this weekend. Do not take kids to see nature, especially if it means

1. they sit in a carseat
2. we are driving in 95 degree heat with the AC on full blast
3. We travel for 4 hours, open the doors and say "ta da. Behold Mono Lake!"
4. and the kids go "you dragged me here to see these plants, animals, flies and this lake ?!?! You could have taken me to the local park in Cupertino!!"

So, if you are a parent out there, planning a trip to Mono Lake (which is definitely a star attraction in the top 10, for a nature lover, but is going to be on the bottom 10 list for your kids), go without your kids, if that is possible.

That said, the pictures did turn out nicely..

Finally, this post answers the question "What has physical fitness got to do with Photography ?". The answer is "Everything!! especially if you are trying to take pictures like the one below."

I am way out of shape. I had 10 seconds to run down from the tripod and make it to the group. It was probably 10 meters max including two leaps across wooden barricades. But NO! I could not make it on the first try.

The second lesson that came from this trip is that I should take better care of my health! (I was defending the position that I had misjudged 10 seconds and started towards the camera rather slowly, but the entire group told me that, it was not my problem).

The scenic shots, the panoramas, stitch photos will probably hit this blog tomorrow or day after.

Until then, ta ta..

Long weekend trip...

Finally got to edit the gabazillion video clips from last weekends trip and compiled them into one!

It has almost become a ritual to haul the family to some remote wilderness at least once or twice a year during the long weekends (if we are not in India or Australia to meet family!).

The drive through the mountains of Montana was by far the best scenic driving experience I have had. The drive to rainbow point at Bryce canyon, the scenic Route 1 in California and the Great Australian drive are close contenders! Rolling hills, mile after mile for a few hours at an elevation of 6000+ feet with a view of the snow capped mountains in Glacier and Yellowstone national parks...words escape me!

You can also see the hotel we stayed in! Open the window and you see a raging river rush by, mountains all around. I was telling San that maybe we should retire here, and she promptly replied that I would get bored if I stayed here for more than a week. She is probably right.

And last but not least, the Trains from the Northern railroad that joined us during parts of our highway drives. They had upto four engines and this is the first time I actually got to see these huge engines in action, puffing away.

Jr. and baby being Thomas train fans, enjoyed the sight of these trains immensely. Without confessing, let me just say that the train was moving away from the camera at a relative velocity of around 130-140 miles per hour and we didn't even cross two thirds of the coaches in a 30 second clip!

I have convinced everyone here that our next long weekend summer trip will be to Glacier National Park to see the Great Northern railroad trains.

Until then..

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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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Traffic

Saw this cover story in the latest Businessweek. The article was jointly written by a person in the USA and one in Mumbai, about Bangalore. So, I am sure there will be debates on the post.

After my recent experience in India, I have started proof reading my posts. Just to make sure that anything that I write that has even a slight tinge of negativity is explained fully in context!

While I was in India, I had mentioned the traffic jam caused by a dead body procession during peak time (5:30 PM!). Had also promised the video clip as part of a long video of the entire India experience. Have to disappoint the readers on that mega video. I recently changed jobs and it has been a very busy month. Posting photoblogs takes only a few minutes but editing 60 or so video clips and making a mini movie is a time consuming exercise. Hope it will happen sometime next month!

So here is the video of the traffic jam by itself:

I wanted to post this because, we typically blame Politician's motorcades, public utilities digging up roads or religious gatherings for Traffic problems. This is a tricky one though! You have to get the dead body out and it has to be at a certain time (after consulting the stars etc.) and the guys have to carry it on their shoulders! That means they need a pedestrian route that does not impact traffic!!

There is a pedestrian walkway on either side of this subway, but it is not wide enough for four guys carrying a body. Guess this is one thing the city planning guys have to take into consideration as part of their overpass (flyover) building strategy!!

Normally, I would have been very pissed off with the whole proceedings, while sitting in that auto, were it not for Jr.'s questions for which I didnt have any answers!