Tech Info: Nikon D300s | 50mm | ISO 800 | f/2.5 | 1/800s

Somewhere close to Salt Lake City, Utah. Shot during our Yellowstone vacation in 2009.

You might be wondering why would I post an image shot 3 years ago. The story for working on this pic goes something like …

I had multiple Lightroom catalogs to manage my pictures. Over a period of time, I had so many catalogs, that I lost track of them. If I had to visit some pictures, I’d have to first find out which year, month it was shot to get started, then find the catalog in that folder and reach the photo I was interested in.

The reason for using multiple catalogs was to ensure that Lightroom (LR) maintained its speed while I worked on the files. If that catalog file grew in size, then it’d slow down – which I hated and hence my multiple catalogs.

This method was fine when the amount of pictures were small. Now I’ve a huge collection and using the above method was really a pain. And over time, I kind of lost interest in processing photos, as trying to get to a photo itself was so hard. So I took a drastic step of consolidating all the pictures in one catalog – I was prepared to take a hit on the performance benefit from a one-place to see all my photos.

After consolidating all the pictures in to one catalog, I can now make use of the real power of LR cataloging feature. It makes it so easy to get to a photo. Also I’m making a disciplined effort to keyword them at every opportunity I get. It might take just couple of more minutes, but I think its worth it in the long run and searching a huge collection by keywords is so damn easy (duh!).

Now storing 3+ years of photos into one catalog resulted in a very huge file – 48GB. After seeing that size, I was like What the %@$#! did I just do. The catalog hosts about 20,000 photos, so the file size of the catalog was understandable. (I’ve barely deleted my reject shots and hence that huge number of photos). What amount of performance hit? How much time would I have to wait for LR to open? Would there be some delay in processing the photos?

All these questions lingered in the mind for sometime. But they all disappeared after just 2 days of using a single Lightroom catalog.

Hardly any noticeable performance hit. The application opens up quite fast (SSDs really help there) and can’t feel any noticeable lag while working on the photos.

Coming back to I worked on this photo – As I was browsing my pictures, I’m actually deleting my rejects. This photo (published above) was a reject, but I just wanted to see how much can I extract out of it as it was shot in raw. With the help of LR, curves, masks and sharpening in Photoshop, managed to get what you see.

Not convinced that a single raw file can contain so much data, hover your mouse over the image to see the before version of it.

Tech Info: Nikon D300s | 50mm | ISO 800 | f/2.5 | 1/800s

From the Smart Phone Slaves series.

When I started trying out taking pictures of strangers, I was so lost. The streets can be really busy. If you pay attention to all the things happening on the streets of any major downtown, you’ll soon realize how chaotic it can be.

But there seems to be a pattern in that too. Put yourself in a corner of a busy intersection and start to observe the behavior around. You’ll soon see the pattern emerging from that chaotic world we live. So instead of trying to capture every little story that happens on the street by shooting hundreds of frames and managing to keep only a couple of keepers in them, I restricted myself to only one pattern I found very interesting and is also obvious; smart phone slavery.

Yes, thats how I look at the usage of cell phones these days. No doubt they have improved our lifestyles in so many ways, but we seem to be engrossed in them all the time. Often I get the feeling that those smartphones are literally controlling our attention span in every facet of life.

Its a known fact, that a very high percentage of people use their phones while they drive. Whats more surprising is that an equal amount of people also text (SMS) while driving. Sometimes I find the warning signs which says “No texting while driving” very funny, but that emotion quickly sends a chill down the spine when you see somebody merging into your lane while texting.

There can be umpteen number of incidents that can be attributed due to the negligent usage of smartphones. Here is an interesting game you can play. Next time when you are out on a street, put down your phone and just watch how others use it while doing so many tasks – including dangerous ones like crossing the road while looking at the phone, pushing a baby stroller and crossing the road etc. You’ll be surprised at your find.

With my recent outing to SFO, I made an attempt to capture some of them. So here is the first of the series and more to follow in the coming days.

Whats the scariest thing have you seen people do while on their phones?

Hover your mouse over the image to see the Before version.

Whats the scariest thing have you seen people do while on their phones? If you will, share it with us.

Tech Info: Nikon D300s | Nikon 28-300 @28mm | ISO 800 | f/8 | 2.5s

A two shot blend to create a vertical panorama (vertorama).

After my recent job change, I’ve been struggling to make some time for photo shoots. But when you have friends who are very eager to head out and try some stuff, it gets little easier to get back to this. The enthusiasm they bring along with them is enough to re-kindle the lost joy of this craft.

Three of us headed out to SF city on St. Patricks day. Our plan was to spend some time on the street and then head out to Battery Spencer for blue hour shots of Golden Gate. I’ve been to this location so many times now and still can’t get enough of it.

Our start was really great as we got some keepers from the street and then were in time at the vista point. Since my trusted wide angle was being used by another friend, I resorted to try the 28-300 for this. The more I shoot with this, I’m convinced that it really is good for general travel and portraits, but for night shots, it does just ok. Since I’m into learning blending of shots, this was a perfect opportunity to try it as at 28mm, it wasn’t wide enough to get the entire tower. So I took 2 shots in landscape mode and blended them to form a vertical panorama.

There is a small error in the blending of the wires. Noticed it after all the edits, but was too tired to fix it. My hope is that with more practice on blending, I might be able to get overcome these kind of mistakes. For now I’m still happy to manage something out of those two frames.

Hover your mouse over the image to see the Before version.

Tech Info: Nikon D300s | Nikon 70-300 @165mm | ISO 400 | f/5.0 | 1/50s

A shot of the elephant’s foot taken during my recent outing to Bannerghatta while visiting India last year. I’d definitely suggest to have a look at the large size.

How can one not love this gentle giant? Its really a remarkable species, displaying almost human like behavior; offspring are raised with tender, love and care; showing an uncontrollable temper; protecting its family; displaying respect for the ones who are dead … and the list goes on. One can only feel sad when you hear or read about poaching. Hopefully one day that’ll stop too. I know a lot of my friends don’t buy those gift items made out of ivory (in fact I can’t even list one who does) – which I’m sure should have some kind of impact (no matter how little). But if you are not in those category, its never too late to say No to any ivory products and contribute a little in saving these magnificent animal.

I was drawn to the texture of the skin, but just couldn’t come up with a title for it. Luckily a buddy of mine at work saw this and came out with the title for it. Thank you Gill.

Processing:
I would usually list the actual steps that I followed to get process the image here, but over time have realized that they pretty much fall into changing color temperature, noise reduction (if any), add curves layer for contrast, another curves layer for vignetting, resize and sharpen for the web with a finishing touch of watermark. So I’m just going to stop the text part of this section and just post the before/after image. Of course if there is any new thing I did than the usual, then will certainly list it here, but otherwise, it’ll just be a before/after shot. So if you have any specific questions on it, then don’t hesistate to ask. You can reach me either through the comments section or on my email.

Hover your mouse over the image to see the Before version.

Tech Info: Nikon D300s | 70-300 @200mm | ISO 800 | f/6.3 | 1/60s

The stare of a lioness when her sleep was disturbed.

During my recent visit to India, I had an opportunity to spend a night at the Jungle Lodges in Bannerghatta National Park. Well, the initial plan was to head to Kabini, but since that didn’t work out, we headed to this place and it was well worth it.

If you ever get a chance to stay at any place managed by Jungle Lodges, then I’d strongly recommend going for it. Its one of the better managed places that I’ve found and extreme care is given to the guests without hurting the ‘go green’ mantra.

The zoo, doesn’t host a lot of these big cats as they have a dedicated large area inside the forest. You can take the safari tour to get a view of them. The safari works really great for the kids, but not for us who want to get pictures. The room available on the van is very limited for a free movement of the camera due to the heavy guarding it has – of course that is needed for the safety of animals and the people inside the van. Due to this, most of the shots would be through the window. So if you are lucky, you might find them perfectly positioned for your shots. If not, then you just have to do with what you get

Processing:

1. Used Lightroom 3 to convert the raw image with adjustments to white balance.
2. Made it into a high contrast image in Lightroomm and exported to Photoshop
3. Cloned out the grass using a copy of the background layer.
4. A curves layer for more contrast.
5. A channel mixer layer for B&W conversion.
6. Resized and Sharpened the image for web & closed it with a watermark

Hover your mouse over the image to see the Before version.

Tech Info: Nikon D300s | 50mm | ISO 400 | f/4 | 1/320s

…the state of the leaders heading the countries now.

Usually I stay out of politics as I’m not qualified to have an opinion, but looking at the current state, even I can’t resist to say that most of the leaders we find around the nations of the world bear no weight on their shoulders. Its pathetic and most have resorted to prayers now. I guess that was the only thing left for them to try out.

On another note, I had to be in this attire during my initial working days. Used to love it. I had some of the best neckties presented by friends. Over a period of time, it got boring and I was becoming more “informal” in my approach to everything. A change of job ensured that I didn’t have to be in this way anymore. That was 10yrs ago and I’m still that way Hopefully that’ll continue.

Processing:

1. Used Lightroom 3 to convert the raw image with adjustments to white balance.
2. Played around the sliders to get the B&W feel which I liked.
3. Added keyword and metadata.
4. Exported by having the long edge to 1024 px and with standard sharpening for screen.

I guess this is my first picture that has been processed entirely in LR3

Hover your mouse over the image to see the Before version.

Tech Info: Nikon D300s | Tokina 12-24 @11mm | ISO 200 | f/11 | 1/125 s

Another view of the gorgeous cloud formation of a brewing storm.

Its been really long that I’ve updated here. Things have been slightly hectic, along with that the mind is clouded with so many things going on in my personal life that I hardly had any energy by the end of the day. So the publishing took a beating. In fact I’ve forced myself to post one today, so any mistakes you find in the info might be intentionally done by the mind

This was shot from the same location of a previously published one – Brewing of a Storm, Yosemite. I was too scared to go near the road as the cars whizzed at an average speed of 75 mph. The best part of this pic wasn’t actually when shooting it. It was just a day before yesterday when one of my friend got a new MacBook Air.

Whenever I see another monitor, my initial reaction would be to check the images that I’ve published already. Even if you edit the pictures on a calibrated monitor, there are bound to be some differences when the same image is viewed on a different screen. So I’m always curious as to how the pic would look. So after we finished the purchase, got ourselves a cup of coffee and when this pic was viewed on it, my reaction was “Holy crap! Am I that good?” Pretty soon realized that it’s the display that is doing the magic, but that didn’t stop me from drooling!

Now I’m convinced that I’ll make the move to a mac. Be it sooner or later, the move is going to happen. As my friends know, I’ve started a fund for it and when it reaches that point, I’ll be heading to an Apple store with a spring in my stride

Processing:

1. Used Lightroom 3 to convert the raw image with adjustments to white balance and exported it to Photoshop CS4.
2. First curves layer for the sky.
3. Second curves layer for the road.
4. Third curves layer for some hot areas of the sky.
5. Resized the image for web and a smart-sharpen layer.
6. Saved as jpeg and used Bridge to add metadata.

Hover your mouse over the image to see the Before version.

The Palace of Fine Arts was one of ten palaces at the heart of the Panama-Pacific Exhibition, which also included the exhibit palaces of Education, Liberal Arts, Manufactures, Varied Industries, Agriculture, Food Products, Transportation, Mines and Metallurgy and the Palace of Machinery. The Palace of Fine Arts was designed by Bernard Maybeck, who took his inspiration from Roman and Greek architecture in designing what was essentially a fictional ruin from another time.

While most of the Exposition was demolished when the Exposition ended, the Palace was so beloved that a Palace Preservation League, founded by Phoebe Apperson Hearst, was founded while the fair was still in progress.

You can get more info on it on Wikipedia.
 
Processing:

1. Used Lightroom 3 to convert the raw image to tiff with adjustments to white balance and exposure settings.
2. Converted a lesser exposed image for the highlight areas.
3. Used both the images in Photoshop as layers and masked in the highlight areas.
4. Added a spiral blur to the sky to give a slight streaking effect.
5. Resized the image for web.
6. Applied selective sharpening for the structures using smart-sharpen.
7. Saved as 8 bit jpeg and added metadata, keywords through Bridge.

 
Hover your mouse over the image to see the Before version.
 




 

1. Used Lightroom 3 to convert all the 30 images to TIFF with adjustments to white balance and noise reduction.
2. Blended 30 TIFF files using StarStaX.
3. Cropped to a square format in Lightroom.
4. Opened the resultant tiff in Photoshop CS4 and added a curves layer for darkening the sky.
5. Resized the image for web.
6. Saved as 8 bit jpeg and added metadata, keywords through Bridge.

 
Hover your mouse over the image to see the Before version.
 




 

1. Used Lightroom 3 to convert the raw image With basic adjustments to white balance, exposure options and some noise reduction.
2. Export the image to Photoshop CS4.
3. 2 layers of curves adjustments for different areas of the dog.
4. Resized the image for web.
5. Another curves layer for vignetting effect.
6. A smart-sharpen layer
7. Saved as 8 bit jpeg and added metadata, keywords through Bridge.

 
Hover your mouse over the image to see the Before version.