Day 281 -Upside Down Flower

I did this yesterday and almost broke my back trying to get the timing right.  I had seen this done before, where an object is dunked into water and the splash is caught underwater.  I have to try this again as I didn't get the result I was after.

Day 262 - Chicken Tikka Masala

I hadn't made much of an effort with photographing or posting in the past week as I was really busy prepping for yesterday's cooking class.  This weekend's menu was completely different from what I normally teach, therefore, it involved more planning and work than is normal.

This shot was done for a recipe and I had initially decided to not even post it, considering the poor planning and execution that went behind it.  I had to somehow take a snapshot of this dish, so I could just write my recipe down and have it done with.

Not posting would mean falling far back in my 365 project.  I'm actually looking at just finishing the challenge.  It would mean two things to me - freedom to post quality, over quantity, and also fulfilling my commitment I made to myself when I took up this challenge.

I will have more leisure this week as I won't have to prep for a cooking class this coming weekend.  I definitely hope to do a little more of serious photography and finish my Alphabet challenge as well - I'm stuck on "K"!

Day 255 - Relearning the Alphabet: The Letter "Z"

"Z" for Zoom Blur

This was my second time trying this - the first time was during Fall, when I tried it on a coloured leaf, but the shot was handheld, and therefore not worthy of your attention.  This way of creating an image is also known as Intentional Camera Movement (ICM).

It's absolutely imperative that a tripod be used for this. Click here for detailed instructions on how I did this.

And I need to mention that all these shots are SOOC, except for this one, which I cropped only.

Day 251 - Relearning the Alphabet: The Letter "X"

"X" As in the "X" in the Fencing (still catching up from the holidays :-S)


I have been scratching my head over "Z", but I know I have to do produce something in the future as I don't have any image from my holiday collection.  So, I just thought I'd get over and done with "X" anyway.

Day 249 - The Hope of Spring

I got myself a pot of tulips yesterday, in preparation for Spring.  I know, I know, it's still a long way to go and it definitely doesn't look or feel like Spring yet (it's -23 deg C with the chill factor even as I write) but the days have started getting longer.  Have you taken the time to notice that yet?  Well, I have!  Simply because I am again looking forward to going out and enjoying the outdoors!  I become very optimistic the moment December 21 comes and goes - it just means the days will get longer, albeit, only a minute a day to start with.

I got quite a few keeper shots from my little photoshoot with the tulips.  Tell me, which one's your favourite?

Are you also looking forward to Spring?

Day 247 - Getting to Know Gary Fong

.. not really the photographer/inventor, but the invention he calls the Lightsphere Universal.  You might remember that I had mentioned it in a recent post and I had barely been able to try it for want of a model.  Today, I managed to coax my son to sit for me for just ten minutes, and after a little bit of haggling and hassling, he agreed!  My lucky day!  Actually, he's agreed to sit for me now and then, but only for ten minutes each time.  I can't complain - he's a teenager after all, and has had a mind of his own since he was less than 6 months old!

Anyway, I started with the translucent photojournalist (that's what the diffuser is called).  When I had ordered this product I had noted that it came with a tutorial DVD, but when I rummaged through the box yesterday, I hadn't found it.  Upon mailing Midwest, they sincerely apologized and let me know that Gary Fong had pulled it out of the kit!  Darn!  However, when you have Youtube, there's not much cause for worry.  So I spent a few minutes watching videos on how to use it.

I did this really late in the evening, after dinner, so I didn't really spend a lot of time taking notes on the flash settings and the position of the dome, so I'm unable to post them today.  I was experimenting with the light by stopping down the power level of the flash, changing the zoom level, or changing the angle of the flash.  I will have to do a thorough study of the settings again soon to familiarize myself with the flash and diffuser duo.

Here are the results from this evening:

I tried flashing the background with a blue-gelled flash, but I obviously wasn't able to use that correctly.  While the first shot has a more or less even background, the last one is the least attractive.  I'll definitely have to work on that.  

Day 243 - First Part of My Vacation Photos

Just a handful from the trip.  I know I have been sitting on them too long and now I have too many requests for the photos.  To view the photos manually, click on the "View All Images" button.  Hope you enjoy them!

Day 242 - Relearning the Alphabet: The Letter "Q"

"Q" for Quick Meal

A delicious and healthy meal/snack on the fly that will keep your rumbling tummies from caving in while you do other stuff.

Another one of my culinary experiments - I sliced up some tomatoes, put the slices on whole wheat bread, drizzled them with olive oil, salt and pepper and then gave them a quick grill at 450 deg F for 10 mins. I fried up eggs on the side and tossed them on to the grilled toast, sprinkled some more salt and pepper and wolfed them down.

My teen hates tomatoes as well as eggs - but this went down pretty well with him too, albeit with a few drops of hot chilli sauce on top of the eggs.  I'm sometimes amazed at how he enjoys hot and spicy food! It's all in the genes! ;-)

The ingredients ...

The prepping ...

The frying ...

And finally the finished product! 

I like my egg yolk a little runny, but I think it would taste equally good if you cooked them through as well.  I also think some finely chopped parsley could have added more flavour, but again, no parsley at home! :(  

The shots were taken under fluorescent lighting (I know, I'm too lazy to set up my cranky speedlight, but I will soon have a brand new lighting kit to play with),  with my 18-55 mm lens, on Aperture Priority, except the image with the oil stream.  I took that on Shutter Priority since I needed a faster shutter speed to capture the stream as I was pouring the oil which meant my hand wasn't steadily dropping the oil on one spot.  

High ISO of 1600 for the shot with the oil, and exposure was compensated +2 stops.  The rest were on ISO 400 and mostly aperture at f/5.

Day 238 - Relearning the Alphabet: The Letter "Y"

"Y" is for Yellow 

This is another post to catch up on the missed ones.  This was at Lake Elizabeth in Fremont, CA.  The day was overcast and gloomy and I remember being really disappointed with my shots as I had to raise the ISO.  You have often heard me complain about digital noise on my camera, and this would be another perfect occasion to whine about it; but I shall spare you that.

This yellow divider (or whatever it is) is the perch for many a bird that's resident at the Lake.  I know I had a shot of an egret and cormorants sitting on it, but I didn't really have the patience to dig through too many pictures.  Maybe some other time.

55 mm,  f/14, 1/50s

Day 237 - Relearning the Alphabet: The Letter "O"

"O" as in the drop of body lotion


Ok, that's a little far-fetched, but I had no plans of doing the shot of the day, or catching up. I'm suddenly exhausted and I just can't seem to be able to remain in a vertical position.  However, after chatting with a friend on the phone and admitting to him that I hadn't even worked on my photos from the trip, I kinda felt guilty and just got up and got at it.  I had no clue what I was going to shoot when I started playing with the bottle of body lotion.  Et voilà!  The shot just popped into my head.

I know it isn't top quality (even by my standards, which aren't that high to begin with), and then, it was handheld at 1/4s at ISO 1600, f/2.8.  And of course I had to fire the flash to freeze the camera shake.  The blurriness is part handholding and part high ISO.

I know, I know - I'm being lazy, but that's how I truly feel at this moment.

Day 235 - Relearning the Alphabet: The Letter "F"

"F" for Fabric

I wasn't sure what to shoot today - I am back to my uninspired state of mind after going ballistic over shooting anything I saw over the past week.  Now a state of laziness has overcome me once again.  I thought it might be a good idea to finish "F".  

However, there's something missing in this shot, and I don't know what it is.  Maybe the composition or the way I set it up?

Shot this with my 90 mm lens, f/8.0, 3.2s, ISO 400.

Day 232 - Happy New Year!

I'm back from my trip and back to the grind!  I had a fantastic time with my friend and her hubby - they went all out to give me and my son the vacation of the decade!  We have come back spoilt!  I can't thank them enough for it and I'm really looking forward to seeing them soon.

My friends and I brought in the new year with a great dinner (straight from the kitchen of Chef Swati), a drink and topped it off with a  photo shoot.  This was my second serious attempt at portraits and although this was a very casual affair, the results were pretty encouraging.  My friend has a great eye for portraiture, having done some modelling in the past, and I learned quite a bit from her about posing and make-up.  I will post some shots from the shoot after I've had the chance to process them.

But, more than anything else, here's wishing you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous new year!  May peace, accomplishments, rewards and joy be the cornerstones of 2011!  And may you be blessed with great  photo ops and the best light to keep shooting in! ;-)

Day 230 - Relearning the Alphabet: The Letter "R"

"R" for Ring

I finally went and got myself a small roll of seamless white paper and tried to do a product shot with that as the background.

I definitely found it easier to set up the subject without having to go through multiple iterations of having to produce a better background!  What a change!

However, as far as lighting the subject was concerned, I was unable to get the sparkle in the stones from the arrangement I used.  I bounced my external flash off the ceiling, and maybe that didn't really help matters.  What I will need to try for the next time is to flash the background so the background turns out white and maybe I won't have the blown highlights in the stones.

90 mm, f/10.0, 0.6s, ISO 400, Manual Mode, CWB

90 mm, f/3.5, 1/8 s, ISO 400, Manual Mode, CWB

Day 229 - Relearning the Alphabet: The Letter "L"

"L" for Lamb Curry

I made lamb curry after ages - because I had my cousin over to dinner, and I need to get some shots for my cooking class as well.  Nothing fancy, because I'm going to be really, really busy this week with different things before my trip.

Incidentally, the curry had turned out delicious, as confirmed by my cousin! :)

Day 228 - Relearning the Alphabet: The Letter "G"

"G" for Glowing

I was going to do "H", but I know that, that's an idea I have already got on my to-do list.  That's saved for a day when I totally run out of ideas.  Thus, today was the day of the "G".

The image was shot with the 90 mm lens, f/4.0, 1.3s, ISO 100, AWB, Manual Mode.  Click on the picture to enlarge the image - you will see the glow in the bulbs.

Day 224 - Relearning the Alphabet - The Letter "I"

I for Icicle


Pretty obvious subject during the winter, huh!

Tiny icicles hanging down from the railings of my balcony.  Took these images with my 90 mm lens, fill-flash, f/9, 1/160s as I was hand holding the camera, high ISO (we're talking 800 here), WB set to Cloudy.

Day 223 - Relearning the Alphabet: The Letter "J"

Starts with J - J for Jujubes

Please don't blame me, if in the next few days you forget your alphabet and relearn it slightly .. ahem.. differently (read backwards).

Well, as I'm running out of inspiration again, and the weather isn't helping, I thought I'd start something I have been wanting to do for a while, but had put on the back burner.  So, while I still had a small supply of jujubes, I decided to start my alphabet with J.

These images were made with the 90mm lens, with the lights off, external flash fired at 1/8 power level, light bounced off the ceiling.  The ISO was jacked up to 1600.

90 mm, f/20.0, 1/8s, WB set to Flash 

90 mm, f/14.0, 1/8s, WB set to Flash 

90 mm, f/9.0, 1/8s, WB set to Flash 

The colour cast is a little disappointing in the last one, and I'm not quite sure why that happened.  I kept the post-processing to a minimum - removing colour cast, increasing exposure, contrast and a bit of sharpening.

Please help me out with ideas for the other letters of the alphabet!

Day 222 - Frozen

We had buckets of snow this morning and I was itching to go out.  However, consideration for my camera kept me indoors while the snow came gliding down in huge flakes - like bits of fluffy cotton.

I looked out of the window and saw some kids with their siblings and parents building snowmen and snow castles.  I don't know what I was thinking when I asked my son if he wanted to go out and do that with his friends.  The answer was of course an expected "NO! Why would I want to do that?!  I play in the snow on schooldays!"  So much for trying to get him to go out.

So, once it stopped snowing, I picked up my gear and left to go to the riverside, hoping to find some birds.  I carried bird seeds in my pocket, and was worried that the poor creatures were going to be hungry since they couldn't really go out foraging in this miserable weather.  As expected, however, I hardly saw any birds, except a few chickadees, and another warbler-like bird that I saw vaguely, but couldn't get a proper shot of.  So, I scattered some seeds around the place and moved on.  Maybe they found them and fed their hungry selves?

I was out for an hour and a half, until the wind started to pick up and it started to drizzle.  There was freezing rain in the forecast, and I didn't want to be out in that, and neither wanted to damage my camera.  So, I just stashed everything into my bag and beat a quick retreat.  

Here are some shots from the afternoon:

208 mm, f/7.1, 1/50s, ISO 800, Manual Mode, AWB

Didn't really get a good shot of the chickadee which was sitting high up on this tree, quite a distance away

250 mm, f/8.0, 1/60s, ISO 1600, Manual Mode, AWB, Flash fired at -1 stop to add fill light and freeze the swaying branch as there was a lot of wind

208 mm, f/8.0, 1/60s, ISO 1600, Manual Mode, AWB

90 mm, f/2.8, EV +1, 1/100, ISO 400, AWB, Shutter Priority, Flash fired at -1 stop to freeze the motion as there was a lot of wind

146 mm, f/5.6, 1/30s, Manual Mode, ISO 100, Flash fired at -1 stop

Day 219 - Party time

We had a team celebration at work today.  There was great food and beer and wine to celebrate our success with a project we had been working on.

I brought my camera to the office, but when I had looked at the lighting situation yesterday, I knew I would have a huge challenge with the overhead recessed lighting, the very low ceiling that wasn't even white and then a couple of fluorescent lights near the sink; and then my flash, because I would definitely need to use my flash!  Well, the spelling of disaster became clearer as I kept getting shot after shot of crazy orange and green lights, despite the CWB.  

I hadn't bothered with my YN460 flash as I knew it wasn't powerful enough to light the entire venue, and I couldn't put it on camera because I had been warned not to.   I would have done it still, but the consideration that I wouldn't want to fry my camera's circuit just before going on a trip, stopped me cold.

I tried playing with a little bit later, once I more or less got all the shots I could possibly get, but as I have maintained, I wasn't able to squeeze out enough light (this is a perpetual problem) by bouncing it off the ceiling.  This was the first time I felt frustrated enough to simply want to pitch it into the trash can!  But anyway, I need to have a little bit more patience so I can use it for my experiments at home, at least.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't like to post any of the photos here of the people at the party, so I decided to post a shot of a plate of food someone left lying around.

55 mm, f/8, 1/30s, ISO 400

Day 217 - The Blizzard

Just a quick post for yesterday.  This shot was taken through my second floor bedroom window.  The glass was dirty and I had the wrong lens  but it did its job.

I felt guilty taking photos of this little kid struggling and stumbling through knee-deep snow.  But this is life here - I did the same on Monday.