Sundar Narayanans Travelog

Eclipse

2012-05-23T22:20:00.003-07:00

Not the best shots, but did start capturing the solar eclipse and had to give up in the middle.

Why?

The kids insisted on "bike riding as a family". So all four of us decided to ride a bike during the solar eclipse. It was interesting because we saw so many people in our street with video cameras on tripods and special glasses staring at the sun.

They probably all thought we were a weird family to go biking and ignoring a once in a lifetime event. Little did they know about my frustration.

People scared me about two things

1. Do Not look into the sun directly
2. Do not take pictures with the camera by trying to zoom into sun as it will damage your image sensor..

First I tried to cover the lens with some dark polythene. That created a large flare. Then decided to use my extender (which is a 2x) on my 70-200 mm f2.8 L (this is a 2000 dollar piece of glass) and initially San was giving me the look and saying "I hope you know what you are doing because you are not going to get any camera replacement money from this family!"

The thing becomes pretty bulky at this point, so a tripod is a must. (Incidentally, shot the hummingbirds kissing using this setup.. you can stay far enough from animals, birds and snakes and get shots with a 400mm setup as long as it is bright outside).

Now the extender puts the 200 f2.8 at 400 f5.6! Gets the sun pretty close. So I used a remote trigger and instead of staring at the sun directly, stared at it indirectly and took shots at 1/8000 seconds and f22 with an ISO set to 100. Pretty much pushed the exposure to bare minimum to get these shots. Also used a gap between branches in a tree to get the shots so that the Image sensor did not overload. Then cropped the images.

Next time there is a solar eclipse, going to leave home, hit the mountains and get some welders glass or the right polarizing and ND filter combinations and take photographs! (My CEO took some really neat shots using this method. He had to adjust the white balance. I didn't have to, but the effect is much better on his shots!)

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A happy day!

2012-05-23T21:59:00.000-07:00

While the torture of going through another round of antibiotics and all the side effects that come with it are going on, there was a happy day in the middle of all this.

My parents made it to the US in one piece after 10 years!

They did not get the hang of life in the US on their first trip. After much convincing they were this close to making it here three years ago before health concerns forced both of them to stay back.

Now they are finally here and will be staying for till Jr.'s 10th birthday!

The last time they were here, it was to celebrate her first birthday..

They were both weak and tired and were harassed by the Immigration / TSA dudes and that was shocking to them. They were the last ones out of their flight to make it out! I was sweating outside because it had been almost 3 hours since their plane landed and they did not show up. Didn't know how to reach them inside either.

Fortunately, one of the wheel chair dudes told me that they were sent to the "New Immigration counter" instead of the "line". The first thing my dad told me after getting in the van was "The guy who checked my passport was rude for no reason and the guy who checked my suitcase crumpled up ironed clothes for no reason. They have no respect for older people!"

How do you answer that one? Told him that TSA folks are usually guys who cannot be employed anywhere else. This is all about "Jobs" and the economy. I may have been rude to all TSA people with that comment but if one thing is going to unite Americans all over, it will probably be a healthy hatred for the TSA's harassment of non threatening folks. It has been 24 hours and they have gotten over it (I hope).

The kids are very happy with the grandparents being in the house. They are listening to young daddy stories. Stories which really need to be fact checked because daddy has a reasonably strong memory and grandma's versions seem to be way off base from the truth.. Nevertheless, as long as daddy's IQ in days of yore is getting a facelift, not complaining.

"Your father used to do an entire math book in one hour!". Eat your food. Your dad was the fastest at eating his lunch in the whole neighborhood!

The kids look at daddy with new found admiration.. Well this doesn't happen often! So soaking it up!

Have a resolution to
- get back in the hot room
- get to a gum specialist and figure out why there are recurring gum infections which lead to antibiotics which lead to killing all good bacteria in the stomach which lead to taking tablets with "bacteria" in them and losing 15 days of Yoga!

One thing is obvious. This is a spiral of good or bad and these days it goes uphill or downhill pretty fast!

If there is good health, there is regular exercise, good food, weight control, more exercise and so on
If there is bad health, there is no exercise, irregular food or sick food, no weight control and even less exercise

Time to change the trend tomorrow!

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A new home?

2012-05-20T20:45:00.000-07:00

After toying with the idea of getting my own site and free myself from editing constraints on blogger, have decided to check out Squarespace!

They came highly recommended and are also a notch above the rest of the web hosts when it comes to Customer service. In the last 24 hours they have responded to me within the hour every time a query was sent!

Please check out this site and give me your feedback!

It will be a long process to sort out blog posts, entries etc.. but this is one of my hobbies and it is more than a hobby. So who knows, we might put a portfolio of images on this site and start covering Birthday parties and weddings, when time permits.

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A special visitor

2012-05-17T22:08:00.000-07:00

Not a single sapling we plant survives the first two nights in the backyard. We usually attributed the cause to be some Raccoon..

This week the mystery was finally solved.

We have a small furry visitor who has a tunnel from the neighbors backyard into ours and he(or she) is the culprit!

The kids wanted to catch and pet but we said "No". It could be a wild rabbit and might have rabies is what we said. The little thing did a hop skip and disappeared real fast.

We have to seal all those tunnels under the fence this weekend!

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Hummingbirds

2012-05-16T23:08:00.000-07:00

Have seen some really good photographs of Hummingbirds taken by my classmates in the last few days.

That reminded me of my chance encounter with a pair of Hummingbirds at one of those picnic tables on top of a vista point at Palm Springs last year.

Now that yours truly has Photoshop, found that picture and edited it to my hearts content..

Here is my contribution to the Hummingbird collection.

It is a pity that we cut down the honeysuckle plant in our backyard as part of the construction. Need to go buy one and plant it just to get the birds to visit our house again...

or at least put a feeder in the backyard!

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More Tulips

2012-05-16T22:51:00.001-07:00

More shots from our one hour visit to Roosengarde near Seattle.

We drove an hour, spent less than an hour there and drove back an hour on a drizzly day, but the flowers were spectacular and made it worth the drive and back.

Note to self: Next year we should go before the farm is topped off!

It was fun photographing Tulips when the air is so clear and the colors come out so vivid that you don't have much to do in photoshop!

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Post It

2012-05-16T19:35:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was the Tamil School final exam.

San was working hard with the kids making sure they remembered their vocabulary words and making sure the kids wrote the dictation words correctly.

The little one made the same mistake on two rounds of dictation at which point she exclaimed

"I am going to write down this word on a post it note and stick it on the table before the exam!"

Me and San : That is not allowed! You have to remember it.

LO : I remember everything else. This one I am remembering something wrong because I learned it wrong the first time.

Me : looks like she doesn't have a memory override function in her brain

San : She wants to legitimize copying!

Well the folks at post it should be proud that a 6 year old has come up with the most obvious application for the note pad!

San finally drilled the correct spelling into the little one's head and she did well in the finals.

Now we are done with Tamil school for the year!

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A little cheer

2012-05-14T21:06:00.000-07:00

Have not had this kind of allergies in the last ten years. Slept through the entire day. Came out feeling a lot better.

The kids came home and saw my screensaver, which had the Tulips.

Me : Do you guys like it?

Little One : Not really!

Jr. : Not really!

Me : Why? I thought it is a great shot!

Jr.: The storm clouds in the back are scary.

Me : It was taken near Seattle and it was raining when we went there. You can see the water drops on all the tulips, can't you?

LO : Now that you have photoshop, can't you make the sky brighter or something?

Me : LOL! Sure we can. Was using Photoshop to get the features in the clouds out. Now I will go remove the features and make it brighter for you..

So, the first thing after they went to bed..

Old Photo..

New Photo..

Think Seattle could use a perpetual Cloud brightening plugin on Photoshop, at least for kids who are born and raised here in Silicon Valley!

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Roosengarde Tulips

2012-05-13T21:44:00.000-07:00

The perceptive lull in blog posts is due to three things

1. Lot of travel. In the last 21 days have visited Austin, Phoenix, Seattle. While the first two were business trips, the last one was personal. We attended the Ceremonial South Indian Baby Shower for my SIL. It was a fun event with family and friends.

2. The increased travel which translates indirectly to yoga attendance has left me with some vulnerability for hay fever and allergens. Also flights at this season must be notorious for picking up germs. No amount of Emergen-C packets prepared me for the allergy onslaught this week. Had to leave work thursday afternoon and slept through the entire evening. In a fit of determination, went and did Yoga first thing friday morning only to be sent back reeling friday night. Right now the body is on a delicate balance and have waved the white flag with the pollen around Cupertino.

3. There was a lot of photoshopping between sickness and work in the evenings over the last week. Finally got done with that.

While we were in Seattle got a chance to visit Roosengarde, a place for Tulips. We missed the fields of Tulips by 3 days. They did have a few gardens still left uncut and we were lucky enough to get some snaps. Now that my strategy for Photographing landscapes has changed with the Photoshop CS5, you can see the preliminary results ..

More to come, pollen permitting!

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Mother's day gift

2012-05-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

We (me, Jr. and the Little One) were all obviously aware of this Sunday being Mother's day. The kids get reminders from school, get to make their little ceramic things with their bare hands as a token of affection and have the surprise planned out.

Daddy is out in the open and unless he has a secret stash of cash he cannot buy anything without Mom knowing it. Actually it is a crying shame that daddy doesn't go to the bank anymore, does not know his bank balance, credit card balance or mortgage balance these years..

San will scream every now and then if I talk about a lens or camera accessory or some long trip somewhere and as long as I refrain at the right times, things are okay.

On Friday we had to get groceries on my way back from work with a detour to Jr.'s dance class. We happened to see a Mother's day sign outside a Nursery and they had a nice Japanese Maple tree for 20 $ .. Knowing that we have been looking for a shade tree for the last few months and they were always around 50 $ thought this would be a great surprise.

Bought the tree, dug a big hole after fighting allergies and planted it...

to get a lukewarm response!

LO : I thought you bought the tree for yourself appa! How can a tree be a gift to Amma?

Me : Every mothers day she can go see how beautiful the tree has grown and you can all go water it. Didn't we buy this tree on a mother's day sale?! It is for mom!

Jr.: If we water it only once a year, that tree will die!

Me : Un vaila nalla vaarthaye varaadha di? (won't any good word ever come out of your mouth?)

San: I was going to spend 20$ on a pedicure. Now me pedicure is planted in the backyard! Don't have a problem with the tree. . just have a problem with it being a mother's day gift!

All said and done, the mother's day gift stands tall and will hopefully outlast all of us. Someday we can sit in its shade and open future mother's day gifts..

Time will tell....

Happy Mother's day to all mother's out there!

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Progressing further on waterfall hues

2012-04-29T00:28:00.000-07:00

Two more pictures after making three copies of the same picture and focusing separately on water, rocks and trees and a final merge..

Another technique that came in handy was to focus separately on things in foreground and things in background (with tripod) and merge the photos together.

Tried it on the Golden Gate bridge the other day from Sausalito and it works.. Same goes for waterfalls. Got this tip from Jay Patel who happens to have a wonderful website where he tells us how he took the photograph! A big thanks to him for the pointers.

Think that pretty much covers the falls in the two mile hike radius from the parking lot!

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More from Uvas

2012-04-28T15:39:00.000-07:00

It takes me an average of 15 minutes a photo to work out the entire pictures..

Focus on green leaves and grass, water streaks, rocks, bridges etc, skylight on individual basis and then apply all the elements to the landscape photograph.

This is no different from the teeth whitening, red eye reduction, skin wrinkle removing, eye lash sharpening and putting these elements in a portrait photo.

Still feel it is too long. Have to figure out how to automate some of these tasks!

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Uvas Canyon

2012-04-28T13:21:00.000-07:00

We visited Uvas Canyon State Park near Morgan Hill last Sunday with the Cousins. Was in two minds to go on Sunday as there was an early flight to catch on Monday morning, but went anyways.

We walked around for 5+ hours through the park and covered multiple waterfalls and walked along creeks. It was a very pleasant day and we thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon enjoying nature.

This was my first trip with the Canon 5D Mark II with the L series lens and most importantly the Manfrotto tripod.

The pictures have improved by leaps and bounds compared to the old broken tripod and the 400D + sigma lens combination. Not that those were bad photographs but yours truly has learned a lot of tricks since that trip two years ago..

Here are a few pictures.. (the second and fourth Images are HDR composites of 5 images taken at -2.0, -1.0, 0, +1 and +2 Exposures respectively and then tone adjusted in Photoshop)

Seriously thinking of getting a photo site..

Any suggestions?

Truth be told

2012-04-28T13:07:00.001-07:00

The little one has been given a project for first grade. It is to make a Diorama of one of the "Frog and Toad" stories.

When I got back from Austin Thursday night , the first thing she told me was "Finally, I also have a project!"

What that translated to is "Daddy, you have a project for me!"

After hearing her go on and on about this I asked Jr. "Didn't we do the exact same project three years ago when you were in first grade?! Remember buying silly putty in different colors and making frog and toad and you made a table, bed etc. with it and painted the whole shoe box"

Jr. says "yes and it is probably still in the garage!"

In a fit of laziness blurted out "why can't we just reuse that diorama?" and left it at that.

Friday evening comes and the little one tells me "I asked my teacher today if I can bring the same diorama my sister did three years ago and guess what?"

He said "NO!"

That was embarrassing.. Now I have to go face her teacher who probably is appalled by my "reuse" concept!

Daddy Narayanan is growing too old for Dioramas and is kind of getting bored of going through same projects with a 3 year deja vu cycle.

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A trip to Sausalito

2012-04-21T22:45:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we decided to drive to Sausalito, thanks to NPR. Apparently the storm had moved over the bay area and it was supposed to be an extremely good visibility day to see the golden gate bridge and also the road down to Sausalito was going to be kept open over the weekend.

So off we drove and had a great time. Got to take some pictures of the bridge, then the kids spent two hours at the Kids discovery museum and we ended up driving around the cute downtown in Sausalito and had some great food at a Nepalese restaurant called "Taste of the Himalayas"

It was an afternoon well spent with something for everyone in the family!

A few photographs from the trip.

Separate posts on the museum trip and tiffin experience later...

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Pu'ahi crater

2012-04-15T09:31:00.000-07:00

Before..

After edits

First Portrait touchup attempt

2012-04-14T23:53:00.000-07:00

After going through many a Photoshop video tutorial on how to make any woman look like Aishwarya Rai, decided to use those techniques to make my Angels look their best.

Wishing one and all a belated Tamil New Years day!

We had some nice food today (all done by San with no help from me) and after going through what has been a series of unfortunate events between the little one's cold and fever and my intestinal infection, went for Yoga after almost two weeks!

Was very weak but still managed to stay put the 90 minutes and do all the poses and came home to eat some good food without having to think of side effects or consequences. It has been a curd rice, bread, milk and gatorade routine for two weeks. Now that is behind us.. back to photoshop!

Here is the yummy vadai that San made in all its glory!

The girls were dressed up today to celebrate New year and clicked a snap. Then decided to play with it for more than an hour..

Raw Image from Camera..

After almost an hour of playing with it..

remove dark circles under eyes - Check
smooth skin tones - Check
whiten teeth - check
sharpen eyes - check
make jewels sparkle - check
eyebrows - check
hair lighting - check
background - double check!

Needless to say, more practice is required to perfect portrait touching up. For a first attempt happy to just be able to transform images without making it look way too artificial.

The Tamil New year in this house has started on a good note.. Wishing everyone good health and prosperity in the year ahead

இனிய தமிழ் புத்தாண்டு நல் வாழ்த்துக்கள்!

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Waterfalls

2012-04-09T22:39:00.000-07:00

Another shot with the clouds coming out and the water showing all the detail..

Before PS

After PS

Portraits are not so easy to adjust unless the original lighting setup was perfect. Having a busy week with a stomach bug, a conference and an irritated family thanks to the little one refusing food...

Portraits will have to wait till the weekend!

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More from the tide pools..

2012-04-09T21:51:00.000-07:00

Double processed to bring out the glow!

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Progression..

2012-04-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

First two days of playing with Landscapes... clouds, sky, mountains, water etc..

Then on the way to preparing for Portraits a brief stop with some flora and fauna.

Presenting, the dragonfly!

Feedback to improve these photos are welcome.

Have now learned to write "actions" which are Photoshop Macros and the process is definitely speeding up.

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If you are convinced..

2012-04-08T17:30:00.000-07:00

Here is where you start..

Will write a detailed post with a little Primer of sorts on the Double Processing RAW Image editing to get both sky and foreground to have details.

Short summary :

1- Shoot in RAW format instead of JPG. Here is the gotcha. When you do this and shoot in RAW, the instant display on your camera will look great but when you download the pictures at home it will not look that great.. Why? because the instant picture on your viewfinder is a JPG done by the Camera's default software to accentuate color tones and sharpness using a set of built in corrections for that sensor!

That means you have to work (hard) to make the RAW image look exactly like it did to your eyes after downloading the picture by modifying it after download to get your own JPG!

2- remember what the actual place looked like. that helps get the correct colors

3- get adobe Photoshop CS5. A friend who works there got it for me for a great discount.

(That means step 2.5 - get a friend who works at Adobe?!)

4- There is a book/video by Scott Kelby called 7-Point System for Camera Raw which goes through a lot of detail on basic editing with Camera RAW. It is a non destructive way to play with the photograph where you can test things. (Yes.. Yes.. I know.. We can save the image as a copy and keep doing Undo and that is non destructive as well, but that is way too time consuming. You will know what I am talking about when you do the edits)

5- Learn this technique called Double Processing where you make two copies of your image.

- in one image focus on the sky (ie, bring out details in the washed out over exposed areas of the original image

- in the second copy ignore the sky (it will practically be white) and instead bring out details in the foreground

- composite the two images by selectively replacing the sky in the washed out white region with the sky from the first copy

It took me a few hours to practice, but it works very well. Have not seen any free tutorials on this that are as good as the one in the DVD which by the way seems to be expensive as well at 69.99 and again step 2.5 helps!

Will do a short screen shot by screen shot primer over the next few weeks to describe this process!

In the mean time we have to appreciate the human eye for its amazing ability to see these scenes in their entire contrast range instantly and the image processor in our brain that can do all this instantaneously.

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Before and After..

2012-04-08T12:48:00.001-07:00

Before..

(actual shot from Hawaii trip converted from CR2 to JPG - linked in original post)

After..

Every detail shown in picture was actually there in the original photo, just not visible. When I took the picture remember the sky being so amazing and felt that I had done something wrong after downloading the pictures. Now realize what was wrong. This changes my strategy for taking pictures as well. At the risk of not getting a bright photo, going to go for a slightly over exposed image which captures details in the dark or better still start taking bracketed photos as a default when going for landscapes!

Now it takes me 15 minutes to fix pictures where clouds and rocks had no detail.

Next step, learn how to fix portraits of the kids and my VC.. aka Sangeetha!

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Amazing

2012-04-07T23:59:00.000-07:00

I am like a kid in Grand Sweets and Snacks (not exactly a candy store person)...

Look at this image from the tide pool visit, which was not a bad shot considering the sun was in the picture!

Now look at this after Photoshopping!

Can get the detail in the sky and the sea weed and kelp on the floor. Can even bring out detail on the family in the center.

Hats off to these guys who came up with an image processing software with so many options.

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Record breaking temperatures

2012-04-07T21:45:00.000-07:00

We are not talking about April Temperatures in the city of Chennai anymore..

The little one topped at 104.1 F yesterday which is probably a family record. We are always amazed by her ability to pick up bugs with such efficiency and consistency year after year.

Foresaw a fight with San in the middle of the night where she will insist on sending the little one back to her bed and I will say "She cannot even breathe.. she is gasping for breath and is having difficulty standing on her own legs. How can you think of sending her to her bed?" etc. etc. We might as well videotape this and replay it every year instead of going through the motions and wasting new energy!

The fight did happen as predicted last night but no one else is sick. Now that is something to be thankful for!

Poor thing was brave through the whole thing. She was tired today and lay down on daddy's lap and watched a frustrated daddy learn Photoshop.

As a dad trying to be "responsible" (San will strongly contest this), my logic was "let me show this girl a few important things in life" like

- always read the manuals
- watch others show you how to do things (ask for help)
- listen to what the instructor is saying without moving on (which is what she does usually)
- Practice makes perfect

As usual, I was wrong. There is a generation gap and kids today have grown up with iPhones, iPads and Laptops.

She was looking at me much the same way Jane Goodall must have looked at the apes in Africa after handing them a small straw to see how they catch ants from anthills with the straw!

Simply could not understand why daddy would hit "Undo" so many times and repeat what he just did for the last five minutes. So the practice makes perfect concept is not going to sink in. Also she thinks daddy is incompetent!

She was happy when the photo improved 80% after the 20% effort and saw no point in going the extra 80% effort to get it close to 100% improvement. Don't know how we are going to teach her that the idea of not stopping with the 80/20 rule.

As irony would have it, what a sunny and beautiful day to be staying indoors with a tired kid and Photoshop!

The house was not without the occasional laughs.

Little one to Mom: Pause the TV. I have to go to the restroom..
Mom : you have watched this Super singer episode already and you can hear them sing from the bathroom
LO : Fine. But if you play it while I am in the bathroom you have to back forward it
Jr.: It is called REWIND! Not Back Forward!
LO : Really?!

She is doing much better today. We look forward to her being her bubbly self tomorrow..

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Shopping spree

2012-04-07T20:10:00.000-07:00

Photoshopping spree that is..

Today a good 3 hours was spent watching an intro to Photoshop DVD followed by editing an old image from the Hawaii trip.

Even managed to create a nice logo with Tamil Letters and English to sign off images.

The original image had too much washout. You either got the little one and no clouds or great clouds and her silhouette.

Now who says you can't have your kid and the clouds too?

This is a start. At places it looks a little artificial, but will improve with practice.

The goal?

Edit at least one photo a week
Watch at least one 5 minute tutorial video every night before going to bed and
practice what was learned the previous night the next evening for 5 minutes

Have to see how it goes over time

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