Options Galore!

Another attempt at salvaging a picture..

The original which was over exposed (my mistake for not changing settings after switching lenses)

My first attempt to cover it up by using artistic filters and adjusting the shadows and highlights..

The "Sankara Sastry" in me refusing to accept the "artistic" fix and doing a proper job of layering the image and blending it. .

At this point the image gets incremental improvement for every 10 minutes spent n the picture.

This goes to show the importance of many things..

a. make sure you check your settings everytime you switch lenses from Telephoto to wide angle so that you don't have to photoshop in the first place. 

b. always shoot raw images so you can pull this off in post processing

c. If you have overexposed sky and you cannot take bracketed shots (too much movement like this boat, wave etc. ) create smart object copies and blend images! 

This was worth the effort.. when printing the larger version of this image on an 8x10 it came out pretty good!

Why bother?

Sometimes San asks me why I bother to sit with Photoshop on some pictures..

See the original of this photo here..

Do you see that "Kebab me haddi" in the background? Well, he happened to be a nice guy, but as far as this picture was concerned he was an unwanted artifact. It was freezing out there, what with the glacier on one side and high speed winds on the other side. My subjects were literally 4 feet away and my zoom was at 17mm  to get them and the scenery in the frame. Simply could not get an angle where I could cut out the nice gentleman but my wife and daughter were flashing smiles at me and it would be criminal negligence if I did not click away!

Photoshop comes to the rescue. See the final picture!

Using the texture of the mountain and floating ice on another part of the picture, cleaned him out of the frame. On the one hand, yes! it is photo manipulation but on the one hand, I have something worth putting in our album!

Thank you Adobe for giving me the wisdom to know that we can always change things in "post-production"!

Glaciers, Cliff faces and cloud covered mountains..

Well, someday I will sit down and write a book about the drive from Anchorage to Seward, but today will leave  you with select pictures. . 

The railroad goes parallel to the highway and close to the water edge. Next time we will definitely go by rail on this same route. Folks we met who had come to Seward on the train said that they stop the train every now and then when any whale sightings happen! 

Apparently the purchase of Alaska from Russia for less than 8 Million dollars way in those days was called the "Seward folly" as people of that day thought "what a waste of good money to buy a land so desolate just because it has a few natural resources".

The place below reminded me of Jurassic Park. Apparently the 9+ earthquake that wiped out Seward in the sixties, originated here and triggered a massive tsunami! Time does heal things.. the place was teeeeeeming with life.

Mr. Seward, I am glad you bought that land and made most of it National parks and sincerely hope that the money minded politicians of today don't sell this back to Russia for a few million again in return for crude. 

The glaciers were a sight to behold. The boat crew fished out a few ice chunks and I got to taste Glacial ice water. Don't know why Global warming so difficult to comprehend for most Americans. What is the loss of a glacier or two, if you are never going to see them in your lifetime?! 

We saw this one break off a huge piece and crash into the water with a thundering sound right in front of our eyes.

Tried to take a few HDR shots of the glacier by stabilizing camera on Boat's side rail. It works as long as the boat is not moving too fast and you are set to a fast shutter speed, high ISO and f >14 (just a tip!).

 

After seeing the Glaciers, the boat took us to one last spot. The captain gave it a lot of hype as a potential "National Geographic Moment". In order to be ready for this I asked one of the crew, what is he talking about and the answer was "he is going to show you a place where Puffins nest on the rock face. It is a rare sight!".  If you have been photographing all day switching lenses back and forth on a moving boat where you can't feel your hands anymore in the cold, what would you do? I switched to the long 400x setup to catch a puffin or two on a rock, given a puffin is a small bird. 

Was totally not prepared for the beautiful scenery that unfolded in an area called the "spires". By the time I switched to a wide angle the boat had moved into the spires. Was hoping he would go back the same way he came, but nope. Ended up on the other side of the boat. Definitely going back to see them at close range on the next trip.

It was indeed a National Georgaphic moment!