Golu 2019

The last month has been busy.. the kids are both in high school, the travel, school calendars are blocked to a point of exhaustion.. Then comes Navarathri festival. 

This year was a mixed bag. Could visit folks only on three days.. The rest of the days were spent in pick up and drop off duties or in meetings. Also the kids did not dress up even once and visit any Golu. That was a new low. 

There were games to be played, bands to be marched in, or the self imposed ban on attending functions while on periods. In any case, someone had to step up and dress up with San.. especially after day one when I told everyone I was ready to go in my T-shirt and shorts... 

There was a lot of shaming and I decided to match her Sari.. there were a lot of compliments from friends, partly because they were all so used to seeing me in the same T-shirt that anything else was a step up. 

Then I decided to do it the other two days of golu hopping as well. . . the end result .. a photomerge to remember.. 

This year the golus saw a lot of antique dolls that were inheritences for the ladies from their grandparents.. some of them were 100 years old handed down generations.. and they are all making their way to the bay area.. Cupertino and Fremont are the New Mylapore and New Mambalam.. have said that before and will say it again!

There were also a these miniature dolls with amazing detail. None of them are more than 3-4 inches in any dimension but the intricate color work is mind boggling.

My favorite from this year..

For the first time all the photos from the Golus were taking with an iPhone 11 Pro Max.. the new phone came just in time for the Golu season and is still being figured out.. 

Slide shows of the golus..

now for the individual doll portraits.. at least these dolls were unique across the golus I attended this year.. the iPhone has a neat portrait feature and if the dolls are lifelike, it takes portraits and enhances them automatically.. to me that is a measure of how life like the dolls are..

and finally, the photoshop masterpiece..that made the experience a fun one!

This blog has been capturing local golus for almost 15 years now.. hope to keep doing that over the years.. it has been one constant that has held over time for this blog!

Happy Vijayadasami to everyone! May the start of this academic year be a good and fruitful one!

Photoshop magic..

During the function for my dad on mom  last week, I had to be performing a lot of things.. which meant my stint with the camera was done.. 

I usually don't trust others with pictures for events.. and definitely don't trust others with my camera.. however on recent trips, have been handing my camera to my baby cousin (who is not a baby anymore) and teaching her how to hold steady, focus and shoot with the 5D mark ii and she has a really good eye for composition.. told her to keep clicking and leave the rest to me to photoshop..

She did me proud.. We did hire professionals for the event but they are working on the photos. We should have great pictures in a week or two.

Saw this one pic where San has her cute dimply smile and I really wanted to make a portrait out of it.. (Credit to my cousin for cracking the right joke at the right time!).. 

The background.. I needed some recently shot greenery.. and the photo from Amethyst gave me an idea..

So here is 2+2=6..

The original..

the background from a group photo..

and the end result..

Have been lost in photoshop for a long time.. work calls tomorrow. My cold is almost bearable.. have been doing yoga everyday during the break and resting and working on photoshop as a good distraction.

Also my wife is back from India and that alone is a big relief.. my girls know how to press my buttons and get anything they want and sometimes I don't know if I am authorized to authorize things.. good that the big boss is back in the approval loop.

Ta ta for now..

Another then and now post..

My parents.. at their wedding.. photoshopped this from an old torn pic from their wedding album.. Haven't figured out how to colorize it yet..

This one was taken ~20 years ago..

was in grad school at the time.. my sister gave me a large copy of this photo on this trip which I promptly digitized.

This was taken last Thursday.. did try to copy over the background from the 20 year photo to match.. don't even know why I spent a good 20 minutes trying to learn how to do that on photoshop... but it will come in handy sometime in the future!

They are not into saving sweaters... still as long as I am around, they will have pictures and blog posts to see how they are aging gracefully!