Third-eye

Another new face in the blog

2013-04-30T22:48:00.003-07:00

A co-worker of mine, after seeing my pictures and hearing my idea that I have been gifting my husband a portrait or a picture of theme taken by me for various occasions for the past few years now, wanted to borrow my idea of gifting and give a picture of her daughter to her husband for V-day and wanted me to pictures of her little girl.

Got to take some pictures of this little girl with V-day theme.

Some back light and soft light shots from the typical golden hour.

A delay by 3 months.

Spring Flowers

2013-04-16T22:55:00.001-07:00

Waited for spring all these months. Now the spring is here with so much of beautiful flowers everywhere, which looks all the more beautiful with sun light.

Taking a portrait in the beautiful mustard fields has been in the to-do list ever since I started taking pictures of my daughter. It will either rain and spoil the day or there wont be the lovely sun light to lighten up the picture or something else, that had stopped me from taking the pictures for the past 3 springs.

This year, got a chance, but the pictures are not up to my satisfaction. I have always had this idea of backlit pictures with yellow mustards lightened up with yellow setting sun. But there was a twist when we arrived at the farm - my little girl refused to get "into" the field - even 4 feet deep without which it could have looked like she standing in front of a pot of mustards.

So ended up with sun-on-the face shots which lead to too much of yellow on few shots.

Many of them are portraits of daddy-daughter duo which has turned out good.

Posting some portraits and miscellaneous "after-shoot" shots:

The last two are the edited followed by unedited pictures taken with the very last bit of sunlight that came down for that day.

Had plans of visiting tulip garden sometime this spring. But after this session, we weren't sure of how much fruitful that trip would be since the whole time, she was not wanting to get into the field fearing bugs, twigs, thorns and itchy legs. Hopefully for next spring my little one wont be scared of bugs, twigs and scratch her legs when I ask her to get in the field and hoping to extract better poses from her.

But still she managed to pull the best in the very short time for her mommy. Loving Spring and loving my little Rainbow!!!

Holiday Shoot!

2012-12-25T21:26:00.003-08:00

To put it plain and simple : not one single thing that I wanted went well. But love the outcome still.

I wanted to try the home-made beauty-dish to put up on the flash. I tried, but I wasnt happy with the results. The image quality wasnt bit close to what it was on the site.

Wanted to have shaped bokehs in the portrait. I know I was highly ambitious that too with my little model to do manual focusing with the shape making paper. Sadly I failed in cutting out a shape on first place. I tried several times but in vain. Not one try gave me the perfect size and shape.

Wanted to use the flash and not the light-scoop. Again, I couldnt put up the setting properly with flash to capture the background but only light-scoop could do that.

Most of all, my ever-so co-operative little model, who was tired. Biggest mistake. Made me decide, no more evening sessions. Nothing after 2 pm. This time, begging wont work, bribing failed miserably and wish I had known a couple more tricks.

Some pictures (actually a lot of take-outs):

The 3 of the above pictures are when my tricks worked. And then...

... started the smile strike. She decided she was done smiling for the camera and then ...

... "I dont care what you do with your camera. I am not even looking at it anymore" ...

... and then with a little bit of success to lighten her mood, she wont stop talking...

... and eating up her prop ( candy cane). I now know that was a wrong choice of prop to give in her hand and ask her smile with it but not eat it!

And then some more talking and then... HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

5 Days of Exotica!

2012-12-15T11:45:00.000-08:00

5 days of exclusive love affair with the weather, nature, camera and needless to say the family time. Sharing a bunch of pictures from a recent trip to Maui, Hawaii.

First off, thanks to my husband who did a small research and found out Maui is the scenic island loved most for photographies than other island and we narrowed down on this.

Second off, decided to borrow two lenses, for the trip and left back the basic lens, since I knew I wont be using it as much. Would never regret the decision. It was a little less burden on my shoulders.

Had a variety of subjects to shoot a wide variety, to learn, explore and practice. Had earlier made a list of "to try shots" , in which missed a bunch while I still was satisfied with the unplanned shots that I got.

New love: Lensbaby Composer. Definitely a hard one on my eyes. It is very hard to do manual focusing with my eyesight. And with lensbaby, I felt I dint utilize it to the best since it was all manual focus. But this was very great for longer aswell close up shots of a busy street or a flower. Loved it and would certainly borrow this one more time, provided I practice well and master the skill of manual focusing.

Some pictures that I like the most out of lensbaby composer:

Lensbaby when pointed on a crowded subject like the lavenders, it gives a scattered effect in place of the bokeh which looks lovely than the regular bokeh I would have gotten with my 50 mm lens.

It is also known for zoom burst effect and for producing miniature scenes. A couple of tries on that:

They were just a few yards away yet they appear like lego mini figures!

And some beach sunset shots didnot come with the actual sun since it was a cloudy day but with the beautiful hues of the sunset sky.

The sunset hues from beach with Lanai in the background; with longest allowed exposure to make the water look dreamy. Worth all the risk that we took - it was totally isolated beach on an isolated place and had not a lot of people except a handful who left well before sunset. My heart started racing as darkness started to grip in. But now, I feel it is totally worth.

Bonus shots that I dint miss to get with the beach wedding that was going on and while the groom and the bride were posing for their photographer:

Used slow shutter speed at various points to get various results:

And few more:

It was a great place to play around with my camera, good that all the cribbing from me for carrying the camera bag + tripod all the way up and down the trails and everywhere else paid back. But again, I have always felt I could have done better and feel sorry for having missed the sunset/sunrise.

My First Maternity Shoot

2012-12-10T14:23:00.001-08:00

Getting back after a very long time.

Finally my camera focused on some one else other than my own family! Got to shoot some maternity pictures of the beautiful and heavily pregnant friend of my mine.

They are simple maternity pictures taken at home with brown and white backdrops. Had always dreamt of doing an outdoor shoot, but when the moment came, I was more than happy that the weather didnot co-operate much. Because, I had by that time started to panic about embarrassing myself with a new person in front of my camera and going outdoors is nothing but multiplying and risking myself with several other uncertainties. That is the same reason for having not gone for couple's shoot but only the mommy-to-be shoot. Again, I wanted to keep the audience minimal to view me getting embarrassed.

Not a lot of picture details, since they are all straight forward, without a lot of complicated settings and minimal post processing. Just that the negative space around the subject has helped so much. So the pictures are coming out straight:

But by the end of session or to say, even when the session started, I didnot feel the anxiety anymore. Except I started getting greedy about not being able to go out for an out door shoot!

The Golden Hour

2012-06-04T08:18:00.003-07:00

Summer screams outdoor pictures. Starting from pretty flowers, bees to bugs and lot of travel pictures it also throws us abundant light to take great pictures. Love summer for this.

Staying outdoors late till the sun goes down brings joy in another way - the beautiful yellow hued portrait opportunities.

The last one hour of sunlight before it sets down is called the Golden Hour and this time is apt to take those yellow hued pictures. It doesnt give burnt spots, no washed out areas, no harsh shadows under the eyes, no squinty eyes on the portraits, but the beautiful golden yellow light filling the scene. And may be that is why it is called "the golden hour".

It infact it renders a lovely golden line outlining the frame of the subject. One can play with this light with a bit of creativity - you can create a silhouette or make the golden outlined portraits or make backlit portraits. There are so many possibilities. Some pictures I got to take with the golden lining.

Not a bad try in capturing the golden yellow line along side her face through her jacket.

There is the subtle yellow line running throughout the outline of her little body.

And those painless "Face the sun, get a click" moments and still not have to worry about the under eye raccoon effect created by shadows.

The above picture was taken on a fine sunny mid day and the over head sun has clearly shadowed her face leaving a portion of her arms well lit.

And how I wish the back lit pictures came out well. By that time, she started getting too busy playing and would not stay still for a second. Or even show her face.

Hoping to make best use of the summer and late evenings to pull out some more portraits and back lit shots.

Jump start to great portraits

2012-05-04T22:20:00.001-07:00

A lot of us donot think of limb chops during a portrait. A lovely portait on a carefully chosen background, for only that, arms from wrist is gone or legs from calves are gone or one arm is gone, or sometimes from elbow.

This seriously is not appealing particularly for a lovely portait.

Here is a picture from one of the forums that shows the limb chops that are permitted and not really appreciated. And as the saying - "A picture is worth a 10 pages of explanation", this is crisp and makes so much of sense.

This would be jump start to taking beautiful portraits.

Fun Shaped Bokehs

2012-03-24T23:07:00.000-07:00

Its been quite a while I wrote a post. Things are keeping me busy. Not a lot happening on the hobby front.

To say, got a lovely Canon Speedlite 430ex ii as V'day gift and its sickening to my stomach to say this - I have not yet learnt to do it in manual mode.

But got to play with the camera and bokeh for the "attempted vday themed pictures". A couple of them turned out well.

The set up was like this: A dark colored background - preferably black, a bunch of natural light and some holiday lights over the backdrop.

The lens opening is circular and that is why we see circle bokehs of lights in the background. To get shaped bokehs it is simple - one needs to change the shape of the lens opening. For this, all I did was to change/modify the lens opening with a precut piece of paper.

To explain: cut desired shape in a piece of construction paper (not necessarily black). Let it be small - really small - a little smaller than a cent. Cutting it too big would let in too much of light and the result would not be as appealing .

With a piece of cellophane tape, tape it around the lens - nice and snug, that there would not be a gap for any light to enter from anywhere else, but only through the cut shape of the paper. Prime lens should keep things simple since with it you will not have to adjust the zoom at any point.

Now the settings part: by putting a paper in front of the lens and blocking in a lot of light, the images are prone to come out under-exposed. So pop up the ISO to the next level and decrease the shutter speed. It is all set.

I just have the end result. The ones of the actual setup has gone missing. Means, one more victim due to my 11 pm editing and making copies of images. Also the picture showing the lens with the heart shaped cut out paper pasted to it, is gone too.

And the pictures after very mild editing like straightening and cropping:

The above pictures were taken very much next to a window on a nice and sunny day, with abundant sunlight coming in. The mug is lit by the natural light. And I kept the back drop far off - like atleast 3 ft away from the mug so that appears dark enough. Also getting close to the subject makes the bokeh bigger and makes the subject stand out.

The above set tells all about the shaped lens opening and the regular lens opening.

Will soon make a post on the pictures of the spring flowers and my trial and error pictures with the Speedlite on.

The Triangle

2012-01-16T22:43:00.000-08:00

For any beginner with DSLR, the first book that will be recommended to go through before trying their hands on manual mode is Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. This is one book that has never been easy for me to borrow from the library, since the "on hold" due has always been pretty long. But definitely worth the wait. I happened to read it for the second time recently and this post is on the words ( or close to) of the author of this book.

Shutter Speed, Exposure and ISO are the three key concepts that needs thorough understanding before one starts exploring and experimenting in manual mode. So those three put together is called "The Photographic Triangle" and the heart of the triangle is Light metering. I have always written about these three concepts a lot earlier, but they have never been combined back-to-back to make a lot of sense. So doing it here.

ISO: Ranges from 100 to 3600 or beyond. Setting the ISO to bigger numbers allows more light into the camera, making pictures brighter even with limited lighting. Say for example, inside the house/building, where the light is very low, popping ISO to 200 or 400 adds sense to taking indoor pictures, which might otherwise turn out underexposed.

But it has its cons, the grains. Bigger ISOs brings noise to the picture making it look grainy. Well, that is not a problem these days, since with a lot of ready-to-download free softwares like Noiseware, it doesnt take more than a couple of minutes to fix the noise and making the picture noise-free and smooth.

Exposure: It is the f stop number. It is all about how big is the lens opening to capture the details of the picture. The bigger aperture (smaller f number), it takes in every detail of a smaller area and the remaining (what we call here as background) becomes all blurry giving a beautiful bokeh. Same way, the smaller aperture (bigger f number), it takes in all the details - from the back to the front making it a no bokeh, all intact shot.

Exposure allows room for the concept depth of field or shallow depth of field. Any F stop that covers all the details in the shot from back ground to foreground has got a good DOF, and anything the makes the foreground - subject stand out from the background makes a shallow DOF.

Also, exposure determines the shape of the bokeh. Say for example a smaller f stop gives perfect circle bokehs ( shape of the lens as such), and anywhere inbetween like f 8 to f 11 gives hexagonal bokehs and anything beyond that doesnt render much bokeh in general.

Shutter Speed: This determines how long the shutter of the lens remains opened and thus says how much light gets in depending on the external light situation. The longer the shutter is opened more light enters and vice verse.

So going by common sense, during low light situations we keep the shutter open for longer time (like 30 seconds exposure or 10 seconds exposure) to allow in more light and during a bright sunny day the shutter speed is high to allow minimal light just enough to light the scene/shot.

After setting the ISO and aperture, adjusting the shutter speed back and forth while holding the click button half way down, the camera usually tells which is the right shutter speed for this kind of specific setting. But as always, there is this concept called "creatively right" shutter speed which might not have to be the right shutter speed suggested by the camera. That is when the room for creativity is squeezed out.

And the heart of the triangle is the "light metering" which is definitely very vast to write in this post.

I would again suggest any newbie to photography who is truly interested to go through this above book atleast once. It definitely throws light on the abcs of the photography with a very simple language and doesnt confuse with fancy terms at all.

Black and White Vs Grayscale

2012-01-05T00:02:00.000-08:00

Black and White and Grayscale conversion are two entirely different concepts, often confused since there is a very thin line segregating the both.

I have been waiting to try my hands on Black and White and have never been happy with the grayscale conversion that Picasa or Picnik or anyother free photo-editing software that is available offers.

Blindly converting it to the so called "black and white" takes away the life of the otherwise beautiful picture when not done prepoerly. Black and White conversion is supposed to add more life or more drama to the scene and should not be taking out the life of the picture.

All the black and white conversion I have done in the past looked either muddy or flat, or too gray or too bland.

And now, by that I dont claim that I have done a great job with this bunch of b&w conversions (disclaimer) and I bet I will come up with better conversions again in another 2 months with the same set of pictures since I am still learning going by the example- the pictures that I edit this week looks better than the ones that I edited last week.

The basics to get a better b&w shots are:

* Never shoot in B&W mode that is available in the camera settings. Converting them to b&w later is a lot simple than regretting to have taken the shot in color.

* High contrast shots are great for this.

* Lighting could possibly add some drama to the scene.

* Shoot at the lowest ISO

* Like it is always said, shoot in RAW. It works like a charm when taken for editing.

A few B&W conversions that I attempted:

THe order is Original- "do it all for me" conversion, and the "attempted" b&w conversion. I like the drama of over-exposed sky and the sail against the gray water than the overall gray scale found in the second picture.

The following one is definitely going to be easy on the eyes. In the order Original - auto conversion - manual conversion.

With a tight crop to compose the picture + tad bit of increasing the contrast + brightness to B&W pop up worked better than the all auto B&W conversion. This above formula is very much possible with picnic or picasa too. Just that there is also the "auto b&w" option readily available and more easily accessible just to pamper us.

A few more in the order auto - manual conversion:

And some conversions which were genuinely not attempted anywhere else, but waited and done manually :

On the very last picture, I cringe for not having taken the whole circle and for having chopped off the top and bottom of it. Sigh!

Most of the pictures were taken in RAW (except for 1) and the conversions that I have done with PSE is very much possible to do with Picasa or Picnic too. It is all about putting the "contrast" to work to pull out a bit of drama into the scene.

Editing is JOY!

2011-12-05T15:13:00.000-08:00

Playing with PSE for the past couple of days. It is pure joy to explore it, though it definitely makes me feel like those good old days when I dreaded to come near a computer and explore as a kid.

I am intimidated by the super fancy iMac and adding to it is the PSE. But no, I am giving it a hard time too. Haha.

I just brushed the books here and there and without exploring, going through the books makes no-sense.

Once I started exploring PSE, with a couple of tutorials here and there, I think I am getting a hang of it. I read in so many forums, once you use PS, you would never return back to picnic or picasa. How true, I already feel this even with the "just started" phase.

A couple of pictures that I edited in the order of original followed by edited.

And how I refrained from using my camera in low light situtation and how I cringed about popping up the ISO way beyond 200. Anything beyond ISO 200 was forbidden to me these many days dreading the noise level. But oh wow, with a click, I definitely fixed the grains in the following picture.

I also was able to fix the tower that stands close to the moon on the unedited pictures which has always disturbed me every time I looked at it.

Editing is a sea on its own and definitely as vast as photography itself. Definitely it is a "learn as you grow and explore" field and has so much room for creativity.

Early Stocking Stuffers!

2011-12-05T13:07:00.000-08:00

The Holiday season is here in a good swing.

The long and never ending "wish-list" for my camera bag was partly and nicely taken care during the Thanks Giving Holidays.

Got a bunch of accessories like lens cleaning kit, lens hoods, polarizing filters, remote control and the biggest of all Photoshop Elements for the camera bag. Loved the deal since most of them came on a definitely reduced price. And needless to say the best of the deal was PSE which came for half the price.

And the last but definitely not the least and definitely doesnt belong to the "stocking stuffer" category is iMac. How I love to edit my pictures in this. It shows a lot of details that I fail to notice with my laptop.

Now I have a handful of books and list of websites to go through, learn and practice PSE which definitely doesnt seem to be easy at all. Off to crank the PSE :)

All about Freezing Motion.

2011-11-16T23:41:00.000-08:00

Capturing a moving subject allows a lot of room for creativity. It allows one to show a normal scene with a zest.

Well, it is not applicable with a tiny little busy body which is driven by a busy mind, who wont sit or stay still for a millisecond to take a picture. I absolutely donot like it when Sujaya wont pose for me or stay still even to take a candid picture.

Controlling the shutter speed is the key to this.

It is always so much fun to play with different exposure as much as to play with different f stops. A slightly different exposure from the normal ones give amazing effects to an otherwise normal scene.

Taking a picture with a high shutter speed freezes the movement of the subject and this is possible where there is ample light source - be it natural or from flash.

And with slower shutter speed, a blurry, heavenly image is delivered, actually showing the movement to some extent.

A few of the high shutter speed shots from me:

The droplet photograph is one of the most difficult thing I have ever done so far. I had not expected it to be so difficult. The set up was to allow water dripping into another bowl and capture the water dripping, or the crown formed in the bowl - which ever you are lucky to get. With super high shutter speed, not knowing where to focus, chasing crazily the water drops and to the top of all - with super low light condition, it was definitely took out all my patience. But I am glad I atleast got 2 or 3 decent ones of over 250 shots.

The Sun would not look crisp like this without a high shutter speed. With a regular exposure, it will be mostly a white white sky. No drama.

Again no drama with the moon, without this super high shutter speed. Moon should not be underestimated for its illumination. It sure brightens up the picture. So to capture the craters shoot it up to 200.

And some slow shutter speed shots. This definitely needs a very steady set of hands or better a tripod. I thik tripod works better in my case. (I am still learning to install the tripod - that is a different story)

That is a long exposure shot (30 secs) and one can also see a bit of light trails. The SF city from twin peeks.

Definitely not a great pic, but a good example. With exposure set at 10 secs, the July 4 fireworks from a very wrong spot. I cant stop cringing about this still.

With f at 22 or sometimes at 29 and exposure at about 1/4. Going below this makes no point since it makes the picture over exposed.

One thing that made me feel lucky when I wanted to take pictures of moving water with slow shutter speed is very low sun light or a perfectly over cast day. A normal sunny day means, there is no chance of getting a long exposure shot under direct light. (outdoors). Plain and simple - it blows out the shot thoroughly.

The list of "to try ideas" seems to be ever growing. And so is the camera bag wish list. The second one is literally spurting with the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays around.

But I dont dare to touch the camera, because - I cant resist uploading them right away and fixing them then and there. But with this laptop of mine, uploading and editing has become a problem. My laptop starts to suffocate and choke and ultimately hangs in a couple of minutes once I put in the SD card. So taking it slow. Very slow. :)

Flowers, bugs and more II !

2011-10-31T13:16:00.000-07:00

"Better put off the camera when the sun is high and bright and enjoy the day".

How true! I tried every single setting possible to take a decent picture when the sun was high and bright - shining with full joy. Not a single picture turned out pleasant. Every thing had blown out spots.

After wandering hopelessly in the Pumpkin Patch/Farm for about half an hour of not knowing how else to take pictures of the picturesque sunflower field, I had already wasted about half of my energy.

Well, then I slowly wandered a few feet deep into the field - nice and cozy, with full shade but enough light to take decent pictures in fairly decent shutter speed, since it was also windy. There I settled for taking pictures of the bees, bugs, buds and lovely flowers.

This picture, came out as a nice and unexpected abstract, since I gave up shooting the sunflower from the ever so conventional angle and tried it from a different angle, which avoided the glare and blown out spots.

I decided to take the picture from a completely different angle, once again when I wasnt able to keep of the mid morning harshness from the bright yellow. Instead, I made use of the beautiful contrast from the blue sky against the bright yellow.

Few more with the Blue-Yellow contrast.

One more abstract.

And capturing the bugs on the flowers was an entertainment, ofcourse after few head scratching and experimenting as which lens to use. But it was fairly easy comparing to the flower shots that I attempted.

Because, the bugs that I attempted were in nice shade of flowers and leaves. And they were tiny so I dint have the hassle of dealing with blown out spots, they were comfortably fitting in the shade and filled the screen as well. All I needed was steadier hands against the moving bugs + the wind. But already I was tired and this last part was a bit of challenge after carrying the weight for about 1/2 hour now.

I did not make any major effort to take pictures of the cute pumpkins remotely. They were all sitting right under the sun, in the field getting roasted, baked or slow cooked in the hot hot sun. So no - not this time. And more over, I was getting roasted too - and I dint have the privilege of sitting and exploring with my own darling time in the shade.

And a last one:

The above picture, has 0 editing dont to it. It is 100 percent SOOC. That was the first ever picture I took in the farm and I later noticed that I have not changed the custom WB setting to auto WB in the manual mode.

It was otherwise a regular set up with the natural sunlight, a yellow flower with green background, but with a different WB, it turned this way. Cool or not, this is definitely a lesson to learn how important is WB.

All those attempted pictures taken in full sunlight, I did not even bother to edit them or search for a decent one among the lot. I plainly - simply deleted them all. Very true- they were all ruined.

And again taking in RAW sure did help. Particularly in the bug shots, a tighter crop gives a crisp composition without compromise on the size and quality of the image. No more going back to L or M size. RAW is worth the space and pain to upload the pictures.

Now with the contention of having taken a few decent clicks despite the afternoon sun, hoping to get back with a Halloween 2011 post. Hopefully. Depends on the level of co-operation from Little Miss Sujaya.

Things I dint know!

2011-09-10T22:29:00.000-07:00

A few things I dint know when I first took the DSLR in hand and started out. I learnt them one by one with after a bad shot or from various sites. I have compiled a list of all those, that my brain can recollect.

Some so very silly and minute but still makes tremendous change to the quality of the shot. Some are major and so very obvious that I have been so very ignorant about that I ended up dumping a bunch of shots after hours of shooting and editing.

- Higher ISO is good to shoot at low light situations but it makes the picture so very noisy (grainy) which certainly pulls down the quality of the picture.

- Pictures with good natural light is always better than any other source of light.

- Taking pictures is direct mid day light gives burns / skin tone wash outs. It washes out the details of the subject.

I concentrated on natural light while taking the above picture, but dint know about mid-day light and the washout. It is so evident in the above picture that one half of the face has lost its details. So put away the camera on mid day and enjoy.

- The last one hour of the evening when the sun is still there(setting) is called the "golden hour" and the golden lining that we get around the subject is one of the kind of natural light that is preferred.
( I am so very surprised to find that I have deleted a bunch of precious pictures. Warning myself for not doing the picture transfer job anymore after 11 pm. Lesson learnt hard way.)

- Reflection of the light source on the subject's eyes gives a boost to the picture that it doesnt require any major editing.

- Most of composing cant be done only with cropping. You NEED to compose the picture atleast partly while shooting.

- Limb chops seriously look awkward and more snapshotty.

- Majorly fix the yellow light effect with manually setting the White Balance which barely takes about 5 minutes before shooting anything in yellow light. It saves the shot.

The first one is straight under a yellow lamp, but I did majorly pull off the yellow from the shot, not by editing but with manual white balance setting. The second one is with auto white balance, which surely shows it is under a yellow light.

- Never, ever, ever use camera flash. It renders very "ameturish" look aswell a load of harsh shadows and plainly take away the life from the picture.

- Farther the backdrop from the subject, the more blurred and smooth is the background. The subject POPS out naturally.

- Not convert a regular picture to black and white without knowing the intricacies of knowing a beautiful b&w picture. I am yet to learn and explore this area, though I learnt that a plain, flat conversion to black and white doesnt make any sense and is pure injustice to the otherwise magnificent, volume speaking b&w shots. It calls for much more details like Black, White, contrast, muddy, flat, gray and etc.,. I have stopped converting pictures to black and white blindly.

- Dump that 55-250mm lens (anything with f# >4.5) when you are attempting a portrait. It gives a lot of limb chops.

- The magic of RAW. Crop, chop and do anything to the picture without losing the size or quality of the image. Best for prints.

- The time invested in learning about composition, exposure and lighting is way better than trying to edit and fix an otherwise average image.

- And the one that I DID know - to start with manual from the very first picture. Going to auto will one lazy and reluctant to try manual mode. But I did the "auto" mistake with focusing and I majorly do auto focusing particularly with Sujaya. Hey, but seriously, with this kind of eye sight every single picture will have to hit the recycle bin otherwise.

Cant rake my brain any more. Learning every day and kindling the creativity is one major thing, that need not be said.

Bonus Shots!

2011-08-19T23:53:00.000-07:00

The wonderful bonus that I never miss, or try and take it myslef - the additional miscellaneous shots that come along with, when I go out thinking to take a picture of something else.

I finally found some time to go through all those miscellaneous shots that I had taken a week back along with the Sun Rise and Moon Set pictures.

The wonderful reflection of the small bunch of trees in the lake water.

One more reflection shot.

Absolutely not great, but for some reason very close to my heart.

Did not want to adjust the exposure in this shot since this was the exact color and light I had that morning.

I know I wont get enough of Robins. I dont want to miss them anywhere I see them. :) I trailed this little guy who was busy picking breakfast.

And I got some amazing portraits of my husband, only I wish we knew earlier that we MIGHT take a picture of each other too. We were right out of the bed, glad that we atleast combed our hair :)

The morning sunlight is mild unlike the mid day sunlight which is harsh and the latter tends to wash off the natural color / skin tone or to call causes burns in the pictures. Where as the morning light is very young, pleasant and gives a dramatic effect to the portait. It hasnt washed off his color, or it has not burnt the picture either.

Though he really liked the pictures of him, I know, he wont appreciate the fact that I have posted them here on the blog :)

Not a single of the above pics were edited. Not even cropped. I should admit that I am too lazy to edit the bonus shots, when I did nothing to the actual (sunrise) shots.

So what next? Indoors, Outdoors, Counter top (nay! Not now), night shots? Clueless!

At the break of the Dawn.

2011-08-13T15:00:00.000-07:00

It has been in my "to try" list for such a long time. Finally I decided to hop out of the bed well before the sun to capture the beautiful sky, the vibrant colors and the early morning serenity.

Headed straight to the Shoreline Park, Mountain View to take the sunrise with its reflection on the lake. It was one of the worst planning, since it is on the west side and what was I thinking when I had earlier picturized the picture of a raising sun against the lake?! It just hit my mind when I was all set and leaving the house.

But I consider myself more than lucky, that I found a beautiful full yellow moon and it was setting when I just reached there and mounted my lens.

I did not have enough time to set up the tripod, the moon was too quick - quickly setting behind the mountain. So I shot up the ISO to 400, which made the pictures so very noisy.

Played with several ISOs, which gave me a cheese like yellow moon against a super dark blue sky and a beautiful white moon against a royal blue sky.

The noise is so very evident in the later picture, where the picture has lighter tone of the sky and water.

This time instead of altering the shutter speed, I changed the ISO. Set the shutter speed at 40 and aperture at 5.6 (possible minimum), I kept moving between ISO 200 and 400 which rendered darker night sky and the beautiful break of the dawn blue sky.

Happy with the moon shots. But wait, where do I see the sun? I saw a blend of palette on the other direction and went towards it. Aw! The beautiful pink, orange, purple, blue, yellow and a few other shades which I certainly donot know the name of or describe it.

The dawn was breaking.

Now the sky is been rendered some colors which is beyond description but where is this BIG sun who rendered it?! Still waiting. And while waiting, a few more clicks just to keep the few minutes moving.

And now the BIG guy arrives.

By this time I was wishing and hoping for a crisp and circle sun instead of it having so much of flare around it like in the one above. Despite adjusting the settings for the nth time, I was not able to get the sun without the flare which made it look like all smudged.

And while I dint want to leave the place, I played some more while hoping for the crispy round sun.

And thought would try a fully AUTO picture while I was waiting ;)

Well, now where is the sun?!

And then ... (back to Manual, donot forget)

I had to climb on a bench nearby to discover a water body which gave a lovely reflection.

The above picture was taken the very next second after the one above that. The above picture was taken in complete auto mode and it was truly this bright when I took the other shots. It was bright like the mid day and taking in auto mode killed most part of the picture. Where is the lake/bay, the electricity lines, towers and most of all where is the sun?

The settings that I did for the other shots was to pop up the aperture to 11 or 16 or even 22 as it got brighter as the sun came out fully and increase the shutter speed to upto 300, with ISO maintained at the minimal 100.

I have absolutely not done any editing to the above shots except for cropping, only for the sake of composing. I should honestly say, I did not know what else to do to these pictures. I liked to keep Mother Nature untouched atleast here.

I will have to do another post for the pictures that came as a bonus with this shoot - all those miscellaneous shots :) while waiting and while roaming around the park, since this post is already overloaded.

Flowers, bugs and more!

2011-07-22T23:32:00.000-07:00

There is a bunch of pictures that I have taken - all from my eeny tiny Patio.

On those evenings when Sujaya decides to be on her own I get a good half hour to play with my toy! :)

Some pictures from my playing!

That was an attempted macro. But it turned not so well with reverse ring. So went ahead with RAW, 55-250mm and cropped it super tight to fit the frame, like I wanted. And a bit of editing to fix the color. Cropping a file when it is in RAW does not reduce the picture size later and a RAW file is more comfortable and flexible for editing.

Some super tight macros of some bugs on the plants. It is quite boring to take the pictures of the flowers all the time. But sure this one was so creepy, that I did not care to edit these pictures.

This little guy was in such nice mood to pose for me and also gave me some time to experiment with the lenses. First I started with macro. It did not turn out well since it was also hiding inbetween the flowers. Then went on with the the kit lens and the 55-250mm (with all the time, the file format being constant at RAW), and was not happy. So kept juggling and finally settled with the 55-250mm lens, ISO 200 since it was an overcast day and shutter speed = half of the ISO that is 100.

The dreamy effect in this picture is with: the subject isolated, the background being atleast 3-5 feet far off, and with my ever so favorite 50 mm prime lens with f stop at 1.8.

Setting the subject atleast 10 feet away from the background in case of bigger subjects and 4 feet away in case of smaller subjects like the above helps in yielding a beautiful dreamy bokeh replacing a harsh, distorted and distracting bokeh.

This shot of the water drops on the leaf was one of the easiest shots that I took in quite a while now. I borrowed Sujaya's spray bottle for a second, sprayed on the lily leaf. The setup was done. Loaded the 55-250mm lens, ISO 400 (one can clearly see some grains) and shutter speed 30, since aperture was 5.6, the picture was done. Crop it tight, up the colors and tweek the contrast, editing is done too.

My next item on the "to try" list is different lightings. I am now trying to play with different lightings (natural) for quite sometime now. Let me try to make my next post all about lightings when I get to try it and when a few of my experiments turn out well.

Yum Yum Yummy!!

2011-07-17T00:55:00.000-07:00

Food in a picture needs to look equally appealing, inviting and appetizing, just like what it is in real.

After going through so many good pictures of really simple dishes or just plain fruits and vegetables and also a bunch of "not so appetizing" food, which actually tastes good, I did a small study on the net to take better pictures of our everyday, not so fancy food. I started taking pictures for the next one month of random things from my kitchen, some prepared by me and some not. This was sure a learning experience and I am sharing the tips and techniques to take better and inviting pictures of food that I learnt and sure, some of those pictures that I took.

First of, starting with the tips,

* I always preferred using Canon EF 50mm /1.8 lens, since I preferred shallow DOF when it came to food, and what else beyond my prime lens?
* Lighting: Natural light preferred. But in my case, I have used the kitchen light, since most of them were set on the counter. Needless to say, with Sujaya around, she will disturb the subject. If taking in yellow light, donot forget to change the white balance or make one - of your own.
* Take several pictures, from various angles, first covering the safe angles like "from the top", "45 degrees" and then explore a few more creative angles. The one I liked the most was getting low as much as possible - lower than being low, to an angle where the texture and depth of the food is actually revealed. And also found the "from the top" or "bird's view" was the most non-appealing angle, since it shows the food more flat and doesnt do justice to its texture.
* Use Rule of Thirds.
* Make best use of the subject. Now that this subject is not going to squirm, walk away or complaint, take your own darling time to try taking pictures from various angles, juggling the props, altering its arrangement and etc.,.
* Also be quick! In certain cases, the dish gets tired easily and since we are doing tight closeups it is clearly visible that this food is been traumatized for quite some time now. So QUICK - finish it - finish taking pictures and finish the plate too.
* Watch for colors - some are so bright and vibrant and add a zing to the picture as a subject or as a prop.
* When there is a bunch of choices available, choose the best. Like a muffin with a dent would ruin the shot, where as one with a uniform shot would complete a perfect picture otherwise.
* Some food categories are really easy to take pictures of and surprisingly they turn out well even with minimal effort. While some are not that nice, even after trying from various angles with various props and etc., The problem is the color and texture of the food. Examples - soups are so sloppy and messy. How much ever you try they cant be shown with a dash of glamour. So are curries - anything that is brown, they are better off when eaten. They are just meant for that! Brown food, sloppy food, anything gooey is plainly not going to turn that great!
* Some also rub oil on the food to make it more glossy and glitzy for pictures. I did not do that though, since these food were actually consumed sooner or later and not just destined to trash.

The pictures:

The regular 45 degree angle, which I personally donot find great.

Sliced it up, to show more texture and color.

Very shallow DOF.

Birds eye view - seems to be working for this picture.

A bit of prop (clock) to show that this was a bedtime snack + drink.

Rule of thirds.

With this super low angle, I love the texture details in this shot.

And no, I dint down them all. I am not a cookie monster, though I popped in one or two. That was certainly hard to keep my fingers on the camera and camera alone :)

I had one more lolly - a pink one, which I had to offer as a bribery to Sujaya to keep her engaged, without which this shot would have been impossible.

This was the only shot that I had taken with the 18 - 55mm lens and was taken at ISO 400, that the grains are clearly visible.

And the brown curry shot, with which I certainly did more than 25 shots and not any of those were good despite serious editing and natural lighting. Lesson learnt - brown curries and soups, put that camera away and fetch a spoon and enjoy the dish when it is still hot! :)

And some more known facts:

* To get nice shallow Depth Of Field, use the lowest possible f stop. It fetches a good DOF and also helps in low light situations like inside the kitchen.
* Since mine was a prime lens, I took pictures and then cropped them to compose them.
* Prepared for cropping and editing, always take pictures in RAW.
* Use a tripod when required.

Happy cooking, happy clicking and happy enjoying! Num Num Num!!

The Gift!

2011-06-04T16:24:00.000-07:00

I wish it had snowed when we were there in Tahoe. But I cant ask for it knowing, we were really lucky to have snow at all, considering the time of the year we had been there - last week of May.

It has been and is still in my list to take a macro of snowflakes.

But well, I was excited to see the snow everywhere, since this was the first time ever I have ( we have - Sujaya and me) seen snow.

The bright and beaming sun was good in one way, since it was warm and not a typical "snow" climate, where I should be freezing. But it sometimes brought in problems, particularly when ever I took my camera. The sun and the full white snow made things over exposed easily. So I kept popping up the f stop to bigger numbers, which also brought some nice landscapes.

This picture of Robin is for my sweet little Sujaya, who likes all kinds of tweety birds and she loves Robins and Blue Jays. I kept chasing this guy who was busy digging his dinner. The Golden Hour - as it is called (the last hour in a day with Sun light), brought in the dramatic light effect to the bird and the grass. The colors are natural - untouched. Straight Out Of Camera - not even cropped.

And one more !

What else did I get to take with my wide angle inside the kids play area / casino?!

Okie, here is a small game that I played. The pictures and settings are here, the inference is so very obvious:

Night view of Reno from 18th floor.

Lens : Canon 55-250mm, ISO :100, Exposure :30 secs, Aperture : 22, focal length: 55mm

Lens : Tokina 12 - 24 mm, ISO 100, Exposure : 30 secs, Aperture : 22, Focal length : 24

Lens: Tokina 12 - 24mm, ISO 100, Exposure : 30 secs, Aperture : 22, Focal length: 12mm

Lens : Tokina 12- 24mm, ISO 400, Aperture 4, exposure 1/60 secs, focal length 24 mm, flash used: Very much YES (one can see the flash light reflection on the glass)

Needless to say :) Camera dial turned to manual and just one press - click!! ONE REASON TO GO MANUAL. You will stick there. You wont mind deleting about 10 pics you have tried to get the settings right! But will sure get the thrill of it.

Walking straight into the boat!

The lovely shore of the beautiful lake. Converted it to B&W to make it a bit appealing, since the original version had harsh mid day light. Also tweeked the contrast a bit, to make it look not too gray.

One can see the horizon in the above picture is all messed up. :) I was indeed tired after holding the super heavy wide-angle for more than two hours, that my hands became partially senseless and didnot even realize I was holding the camera all tilted. This is AFTER adjusting the horizon :)

Settings for above picture:

Lens : Tokina 12 -24mm, ISO 200, Aperture : 22, Exposure : 1/250 sec, focal length : 24mm.

Higher the shutter speed, starry the Sun. Lower shutter speed renders a big white Sun with circles but no flares/starry effect. So the key was to keep increasing the shutter speed after setting the required ISO and aperture till we get the starry effect.

One more mistake that I will keep regretting about for next few weeks. I wonder what on earth I was thinking when I left back the tripod in car to run to this place where I HAD thought of taking long exposure water shots. The only shot that came better in about 50 shots that I had taken - hand held!

Atlast got a chance to try good landscape pictures. Thank my husband for giving this wonder trip to a scenic spot, with a wide-angle lens. Perfect Gift for our 6th wedding anniversary. Couldn't have asked for more. L.O.V.E.

Getting Wild with WIDE!!

2011-06-04T00:31:00.000-07:00

TOKINA 12-24mm WIDE ANGLE LENS. Cant stop thinking of this!

Wide angle lens does better justice in capturing the majesty of Mother Nature. It is THE best for landscape photography.

Had been on a trip to Tahoe/Reno and I decided to rent a Wide angle lens for the trip after some study I made while we planned for the trip.

I found out 55-250mm is no where when it comes to taking landscape pictures and I was on a lookout as what would cater to my need. I found out buying a wide angle was out of question since it starts from $500+.which is certainly a big budget.

But wait, how about renting / borrowing one for 3 days. I dont travel a lot and I dont need a wideangle for day to day pictures. So why lock $500+ in a lens which would come out may be for just 10 days a year? How about paying $35 for 3 days ( or $40 for 4 days), use it, and return it? That seems a lot more effective as well as, well withing the budget.

When I started out what kind of lens I should be taking, I was completely lost -there are so many in the market -to buy/ to rent.

Some key points that I inferred to consider before choosing one:

* Lesser the number , wider the angle. Example : 12-24 mm is preferred than 50mm or 85mm, since more of the scene can be brought in via 12 - 24 mm. But the old-school says 35mm is the preferred number and anything less than 14mm gives distorted images - better for artistic results.
* No greater zoom required.
* No smaller f# required. Obvious, since landscape is usually done with larger f numbers - 18 and above. So it doesnt matter how wide the lens can open.
* Donot forget tripod.
* Get a polarizing filter.
* Dump that UV filter particularly on bright and sunny days.
* And last - a crude tip : A lens with a red ring around it is considered to have better picture quality than a regular one. Not sure as how true it is, but this sure caught my attention, though I didnot go for one with a red ring around it.

Some pictures:

The last picture shows a lizard right under my foot to the far away clouds and still the blue/green color of the lake is yet intact!

Wish I just had warmer light - not the harsh mid day light in almost all of these pictures. Also regret for not removing the UV filter which has rendered its lens flare in almost all the pictures.

But end of the shoot, I was happy - indeed. And not my job of explaining / convincing my husband as where to use, how is it different from the lens that you have, what can it do and etc., questions of my husband when I actually need one. Infact he is more than happy than me with this lens (All SMILES).

Will soon update another post with the other "non-wide angle" pictures.

Easter Egg Hunt

2011-04-26T00:35:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter.

This was our first easter egg hunt. And Sujaya sure enjoyed it thoroughly.

She did not like any one touching her face. So the face painting was now hand painting.

You cant pay the kids to sit still for a minute - BUT SURE CAN PAINT THEM TO SIT STILL. Was seriously surprised to see the eeniest of kid, who otherwise is so busy totting around, to sit without a squirm to get their favorite picture drawn on their cute little face.

These kids under 3 did not understand / care for the rules of the egg hunt. They just entered the hunt area even while they were setting the field. Their rule was:
I know there are candies inside some of these eggs. And there are already so many of them lying around. So GO GET THEM!

Busy little bodies slowed down to concentrate and put the fullest effort in opening the eggs to find their treasure.

Sujaya opening her first OFFICIAL treasure. And her basket of eggs.

Kids Hunting - showing off - and enjoying !

Had ideas of taking some pictures of children getting wild after all the stimulation and sugar. And sure I got a couple of them. But then, I stared getting my own doze, at which point I certainly didnot enjoy or even thinking photographing those moments. So without a go, had to put away the camera :) But sure, one can imagine the scene after the hunt!

And the settings part:

Lens : Juggled between Canon EF 50 mm and 55-250mm lenses
ISO : 200 since it was an overcast day

Kept changing the aperture for various scenes - from 1.8 to maximum 5.6 and adjusting the shutter speed accordingly. Actually, I preferred 50mm, since it opens wide, which means, I can take "non-grainy" pictures with better shutter speed, which is a must with children

And at home - we dyed (painted as Sujaya calls) some eggs at home. Sure it was fun, though it was a mess. One can see some patterns that I had ATTEMPTED to make - but they didnot turn so very well.

Wasnt able to take more pictures of these eggs, arranged any different, with Sujaya and her dad waiting to eat their favorite ones.

Sure, it was fun and event - full weekend.

A Trip to CAS

2011-04-05T22:47:00.000-07:00

A Trip to California Academy of Science.

Something to learn and play for me and my daughter.

2 eyes and 2 duties. One taking pictures and the other enjoying Sujaya enjoying her weekend mini trip.

It was just a 3-4 hours outing, with NO stopping anywhere. Had we got some more time, I will bee feeling blessed to have tried the "outdoor shoots" that I have been wanting to do for a long time now.

But Sujaya was so tired after so much of exploring, playing and learning, that we immediately had to leave. Otherwise, it was beautiful sunshine (evening yellow) and very beautiful cherry orchard right outside of CAS. Perfect time I should say. But unlucky - we didnot find one parking space also. It was so crowded. I was able to see so many people out with their tripods and cameras trying to capture the magnificent cherry orchard.

This little blue bird which comes from the family of humming bird was so swift and was a good challenge to lay a focus.

The jelly fish is the only sea creature that I have ever uploaded or edited. One thing - most of the pics did not turn out fine. Second thing - I am tired of seeing them any more - even for the sake of filtering and editing. I was looking at them with bare eyes or through the lens the whole of the 4 hours we were there. So a BIG no to any of the fish, star fish, and anything else from the water.

Ok these were frogs - nice and with corasting colors, but I seriously doubt if they were real.

And some butterflies. This summer, I am seriously planning to take good pics of "free range" butterflies.

It was a good experience inside the CAS - not bad. but it would have been wonderful, had we got a parking space to experience capturing the beauty of the cherry orchard.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nithyaumaresh/

And Flowers too..

2011-03-31T23:47:00.000-07:00

Spring brings lots of lovely flowers, baby ducks, and good sunshine till 7 pm.

Yay! to the Sun who decided to be around us till 7 pm. I tried to make the bestest use of it.

It has been raining and pouring for so long here - that I dont even remember for how long this rain was going on. I had almost forgotten and given up taking pictures of some flowering trees of the spring. All those flowery trees were gone past the flowering period and has even got leaves now, but I have not yet taken one single picture this year. I just kept watching them bloom, wither and shoot up with new leaves, without a fine time to pull out my camera.

But then atlast, there was one last bunch of bloomers - late bloomers especially for me in a car parking lot on the way to Sujaya's school. So went there on the golden hour - the last one hour before sunset, and managed to get a few pictures.

I have missed a beautiful yellow flower field ( mustard - I am not sure), right in front of my eyes. I had set an eye on for a shoot with Sujaya, but because of this rain, I was so badly held back, I missed it blooming yellow and turning green right there - in front of my eyes, in matter of 10 days! I have marked this spot for next year :)

And on the camera settings:
Lens : Canon EF 50mm
Aperture: From 1.8 to not more than 3.5
ISO : 200 , 400 for shady spots.

The Lower aperture helped me get the beautiful white flower bokeh. I did not get this result last year when I did with the kit lens, f 4 or 5.6

Also did a basic editing of adjusting the contrast, warming up the pictures to add more yellow to the setting sunlight and needless to say some cropping and color boosting with Photoshop CS4.

And one more - that says we had lots of rain. Mosses on a tree branch.

Happy Spring!!! Let the Sun shine every where and on everyone.

Spring brings Ducklings!

2011-03-31T23:17:00.000-07:00

Spring is here, spring is here, spring is - spring is - spring is -- here - ATLAST!!!

Spring brings, baby leaves, lots of flowers, rain, tweeting birds and DUCKLINGS!!

I just spotted a cute little bunch of ducklings, dutifully and submissively following the mama duck. (How I wish I had a well behaved child like that).

To capture decent shots of the ducklings I cant go near them with their over possessive mama around so 55-200 mm was the only choice, in which the f stop doesnt go beyond 4.6 or sometimes 5.6, and what am I supposed to do with that f# and an OVERCAST day?! Huh!

But we were lucky - super lucky, that the moment I came out with camera, the sun started to shine - for one blessed hour just enough time to take some pictures of the ducklings - the little darlings.

The mama duck took them all into the pool and the babies didnot know how to climb out of the pool. So they kept swimming the whole stretch of the pool - up and down. And yes, they were taking their swimming lessons in the swimming pool.

But certainly the ducklings WERE squirmier than Sujaya - they wont stay still for a second to lay my focus on, let alone click them. They kept quacking and swimming and wiggling, and they were more restless because, they were not able to come out of the pool. All the "young ones" be it mine or the ducks, are the same - difficult to get a decent picture of! And to my side was Sujaya, starting to fuss and complaint about the ducklings not playing with her. She had a serious heart break, when they didnot come to play with her after she called them out several times.

And for these pictures I have used the photoshop CS5 for post processing. I dint do much of editing, since I dint know much with photoshop. I just did basics like tweaking the brightness, contrast, cropping and tried my level best to pull of some color of the blue pool to make it look natural.

So here are some pictures of the ducklings.

SPRING HAS SPRUNG! ATLAST!!