Category: Travel

Tower Falls, Yellowstone

~ Sudhi ~ 3 Comments

Tower Falls, Yellowstone

Standing at a height of ~130ft, tower falls is another beauty in yellowstone national park. The overlook area is pretty close to the parking lot, so it is easily accessible. There is another short and steep hike which leads all the way to the base of this falls, which of course we didn’t do it and have reserved it for my next visit.

This is the first waterfall shot that I’ve ever attempted. When we arrived at this place, the lighting was just enough to get that milky effect for the falls. I was literally day dreaming as to when I’ll get a chance to shoot waterfalls and when I found this, forgot about everything and was only looking at getting that effect to the falls. As it turns out, it wasn’t bad either. I did get that effect and took quite a lot of learning too.

Details:
Exposure: 0.2s
Aperture: f8
ISO: 200
Lens: 18-105 @50mm

Blues over Fire Hole River, Yellowstone

~ Sudhi ~ 5 Comments

Blues over Fire Hole River, Yellowstone

This shot was taken during our recent visit to Yellowstone National Park. Its the Fire Hole river running next to Midway Geyser Basin point.

We were staying at west yellowstone and due to a road closure, we had to drive down south on the grand loop road. This is one of the first couple of tourist spots that you encounter while heading in that direction. See the map on flickr for exact location. We (my “wife” to be precise) were keen on seeing places which we (read she) had missed earlier, so we didn’t stop at this place as we (again “she”) had already seen this spot from an earlier visit.

By the end of the day we were ready to head back to west entrance to dine at the famous Chinese restaurant. Its the only place I know where you get some spicy food which all three of us like. Yeah, even my 2 yr old likes spicy now :). The problem with them is that they close pretty early and if you are stuck deep in the park, then you pretty much have to eat pizza for the night, which I don’t mind, but was turned down by the other family members. So I was trying to make up time by leaving early and getting to the restaurant just in time to place the last order.

I had given up on the sunset shot that I had in mind as “dinner” took precedence. While nearing midway geyser basin, noticed that the entire light conditions were looking more “blue” to my eyes. I knew from an earlier picture that the lens will capture more “blue” than what we can see. Ignoring my wife’s look, I just turned back convincing her that I’ll just try one shot and will make up for the time. I was so keen on trying this, that I didn’t even bother to check her expressions. Quickly parked the car, took the camera and tripod out of the trunk and headed down the valley. Even tripped on a stone, but luckily had the camera strap on my neck.

At the river bed, looked for a simple composition which involved lots of blue color and found the small set of stones in the river which would give the feel of river flow. By this time, the blue color which my eyes had seen was fading very fast. Took a test shot at 10s, but it turned out more dark than what I had anticipated. So tried another one at 30s, which looked little better on the preview. During that 30s a car pulled out of the parking lot. The moment they started the engine and lights were turned on, I thought I would loose this one too. But the histogram convinced me that I could salvage something by cropping that area which was lit by the car. By this time, my wife had come out of the car and was ready to “kill” me. I didn’t say a word, headed back to the car and drove the remaining distance praying that we reach on time to at least place a last order.

Luckily did reach on time and had a wonderful dinner. After some food made its way to my wife’s belly, I showed her the preview. I had never seen her eyes open so wide and I knew immediately that this one was a keeper.

Processing also was very easy. The top right part was lit by the car which pulled out. While processing I din’t crop it out as it added a border element to the otherwise blue river in the composition. Worked on levels to increase the contrast and added a drop shadow effect to the border. Overall I’m very pleased with the result. Hope you guys enjoy it too. View large for best effect.

Moon Light over Pacific Coast

~ Sudhi ~ 2 Comments

Pacific Coast lit by moon light

During the recent visit to Pigeon Point Lighthouse, we stopped at various places on the way trying to capture the raging pacific ocean. I have quite a few of those that needs to be processed. After reaching the lighthouse and taking some shots of it, we were ready to try some long exposures of the lighthouse. During those long exposures, I couldn’t help but notice this beautiful sight of the ocean lit by moon light and it wasn’t even a full moon. So I turned my camera to this direction and took a shot at it.

This shot was about 5.5 mins of exposure. The problem with it was that the kit lens that I have (18-105mm) doesn’t have the infinity marker on it. So when using manual focus at night, its really hard to make out whether the elements of the picture are in focus. Also the lens that I put on for my eyes doesn’t help either. So I just turned the focus right all the way to the right. Apparently, to get the focus at infinity, the procedure with this lens is to turn all the way to the right and then back off by 1-2 degrees. All along I’ve been assuming that the focus doesn’t go beyond infinity…but it does with this lens. I’ll have to remember this for next time 🙂

The second problem was with the tripod. I’ve to blame something for my mistakes right? 🙂 It was pretty windy and chilly during that night. I know that I don’t have the sturdiest tripod, but to compensate that, I don’t usually raise the legs all the way up. I try to keep it at about 1-2 feet off the ground level, just to get that extra bit of steadiness in it. For this shot, I had to raise it even more off the ground due to the location, which resulted in getting the dreaded camera shake. You can make that out if you look at the larger version of this image.

Even with the camera shake, I still like this picture due to the mood it sends out. Also I tested a print of it on my color printer and that turned out pretty well. So I guess I can take some good things from this image after all 🙂

Bellagio at Night

~ Sudhi ~ 2 Comments

Bellagio, Las Vegas

View Large

We are just back from a Vegas trip and here is the first shot from the trip. This is the famous Bellagio Casino Hotel and its musical fountains.

The fountains dance to some repeated tunes and when I took this shot, it was the song from Titanic. For the entire duration of the song, the fountains dance and its really a sight to watch.

On weekends, this place gets too crowded. I had to literally guard my tripod using my body as a shield on one side and my daughter in her stroller on the other side. I had some problems in choosing the exposure in getting the entire set of fountains and having enough lights for the backdrop of hotel. Either the fountains would blow out or the hotel would be too underexposed. So the entire of first song went in just fiddling with the settings and by the end of it, I had kinda got the hang. Next was to wait another 15 mins for the fountains to start dancing again. Luckily this time, I got it right enough to get all of them shoot up in air at almost the same height.

Now my wish is to visit the KSR dam in Mysore and get a picture of its fountains 🙂

Fire Trucks

~ Sudhi ~ 4 Comments

Fire trucks at Hogan Lake

We see these trucks almost everyday and if you are driving on the road and see these in your rearview mirror, then you better make sure you give way to them by pulling to the right/left. These are the turcks used by the fire department in US. They are very colorful and vibrant when compared to the ones we find back home.

During a recent camping trip, a fire broke out pretty close to our camp site. Luckily it was put off with the help from these guys. Govi and I couldn’t control our curiosity and headed to the location with the camera. By the time we reached the place, these guys were just packing up. I even have a beautiful fire fighter picture (need to find some time to process it).

The 2 trucks stood in the hot sunny afternoon ready to head out. Since I was reading up on High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging, wanted to try my hand at it. This picture is a combination of 3 exposures taken at -2, 0, +2 hand held. The HDR was generated using Photomatix and later tone-mapped. Its very common to find HDR images which are processed to an extreme values. At the moment it hasn’t caught my interest, but what some folks do is to use HDR to generate a more realistic looking image (mostly in landscape shots) which is really cool. Though I haven’t figured out how to do them, I had to settle at a border line with this one, just enough to bring out the “artistic” feature of HDR in it.

View Large On Black

Entry to heaven on earth

~ Sudhi ~ 9 Comments

Entry to heaven on earth

This is the view of North Entrance Gate to Yellowstone. During our last visit to yellowstone in 2008, we couldn’t get to this place as we were short on time. This time, even though it was pretty late, we still managed to visit it.

The gate is really huge and I can only imagine how a picture of it with clouds in the background would have turned out.

Due to some construction work, the key access point was closed. This meant that we had to drive really long to get here. Though it was just 25-30 miles, due to the speed (35 m/h) it would take around 40 mins for us to just reach there. Add to this we even stopped at Mammoth to grab a quick bite. By the time we reached it was pretty late in the evening. I wanted to take a picture of this gate with some clouds in the background and since the night was pretty clear, I had almost decided to turn back. My wife on the other hand pushed for this. I’m so glad she did that as I could atleast come back with a pic 🙂

When we reached this place, it was pitch dark. I was slightly disappointed, but as I was taking the camera out of the car, noticed the gate being lit by the oncoming traffic. There wasn’t a huge amount of cars going through this gate…an occasional one just whizzed by. I thought probably thats all I need to get a picture.

As I began to compose for this, the auto-focus on the camera went crazy. Of course it would as there was no object for it to lock the focus on. So I had to go the manual way for it. The reason for the picture not being sharp enough is because my eyes just couldn’t tell whether the image was clear or not in the viewfinder. Kind of guessed at a particular setting and set the timer for 3 mins. During this 3 min, not even one car went by…adding more to my disappointment. Hoping that a more longer interval would get atleast one car to pass by, I set the timer to 5 mins and got lucky. There were three cars (2 in one direction and the other one in the opposite direction) that passed which got enough light to get this picture.

Though I would’ve liked for more cars to go by, I had to stop as we were getting really late. So for now I’ve to be satisfied with this one. Probably next visit, I can plan better to be at this location when there is some natural light available.

UPDATE: With slight sharpening added to the image, it turns out like this:

2009-09-14_01-PSE

New Hogan Lake Camping

~ Sudhi ~ 7 Comments

2009-08-08_005

Last year, my friends asked me to join them for camping, I had to say no. This year, I was more eager than anybody to do it :). I had my reasons for saying “no” last time. Nidhi was still not old enough for it. Probably I should say I wasn’t ready with Nidhi to do camping. I was more worried about addressing her needs in a remote place. Now that she has turned 2, we were more prepared and joined our gang of friends for 2 nights stay at New Hogan Lake camp grounds which is near Valley Springs, CA.

Since my friends had all the camping gear between them, there was no need for me to purchase anything. But the spendthrift in me took this opportunity to get some sleeping bags for the family. I’m sure it’ll come handy in future trips.

We decided on taking 2 cars rather than 3 as our campsite had only 2 slots for parking. Though my car was heavy, it still gave me a 35.5 mpg for the entire stay…cool eh! I’m not going to mention the speed of my driving…though many of you know that its a constant one. Since we were starting on a Friday evening, we did hit some traffic on the way. But we were prepared to pitch the tent at night time, which was fun.

I was happy that I could get away from light pollution of city and be in the midst of clear darkness. The air was so pure that you couldn’t get any kind of reflection. Usually in the city when you take night shots, you tend to get that hazy light towards the horizon and in the sky, but out here it was a cool blue. I tried my hand at capturing star trails and it turned out pretty ok.

The lake near our camp site had dried up due to the summer heat, but there was still plenty of water in it for people to try out their water sports. Too bad there wasn’t any rentals available out there, otherwise we could have used some water sports on that hot day. Did manage to get some shots of people having fun though 🙂

We didn’t spot any rattlesnakes or any other other wild life, but the scary part came from the sirens of fire engines. Apparently Govi and Sandy boy saw a thick smoke on their way back to the campsite (after getting some needed supplies). The two fire trucks were out there trying to put off the fire that engulfed some part of the campsite near the amphitheater. Luckily it was brought under control and put-off, otherwise we would have to vacate the campsite in a hurry 🙁

We spent most of our time either cooking, exploring the area and just being plain lazy 🙂 Nidhi had a blast of a time too, though the heat was terrible. Wonder how I’ll cope up when I visit Bangalore next time…bay area chilliness is screwing up my tolerance for warm weather.

All in all we had really a great time camping. Next summer I do intend to camp more often and with my friends out here, all I have to do is just hint and we’ll be set 🙂

Photos taken during this trip have been uploaded and can be accessed here

San Diego – Day 3

~ Sudhi ~ 1 Comment


Again it was my turn to be late on this day too. Surprisingly my wife wasn’t as furious as I thought she would be. Both Nidhi and she were ready pretty fast and I took most of the time 🙂 And to top that on the way to the Zoo there was an accident on I5 and that held up another 30 mins. I was expecting a huge line at the entry gate. And it turned out just that. Now I could see my wife’s face getting red…but to my rescue, the line was moving fast and we got in without much of a wait time. Thank God!

First we decided to take one of the many trails leading to each area of the animals kept. So we kept walking seeing birds, monkeys, wild boars, hippo etc. At the hippo place, there was a metal hippo kept on the ground as a show-piece. Nidhi was more happy on it than actually seeing the hippo in the pool. Got some nice shots of her expressions there. The one which I liked was when she started crying the moment we headed out of the place. That photo is like a proof to my parents and in-laws back home that she does throw her tantrums around.

The best view of the animals I got was that of the panda bear. There were 2 pandas and both of them were sleeping. There was a sign which said “Be Quite”. Since Nidhi is not yet old enough to follow all the directions, the moment she went near to the Panda, she started greeting it with “Hi Panda…get up…what are you doing?” etc. This got the best laughter I’ve heard from the crowd out there and we all had to remind ourselves to be quite 🙂 The conversations kept going between Nidhi and Panda (though it was a one-way traffic) and we had to literally drag her out of that area.

Had a quick lunch and then we decided to take the bus tour. Since elephants are the current favorite animal for Nidhi we wanted to taker her there. Since it was quite far to walk, the bus tour seemed more appropriate. By the time we reached the line to get onto the bus, Nidhi was fast asleep. Luckily she got up just in time the bus started moving. She slept through the long line we had to go through before getting on the bus. I’m glad she took the nap as I would have had a tough time keeping her in-line 🙂

The bus tour gives a general “overview” of all the places around. It doesn’t stop enough to give take photos and is constantly on the move. So most of the animal shots are either out of focus or blurred. Along with this add Nidhi’s constant craving to “touch” them kept me moving in the seat. So it wasn’t an ideal setting to take photos, but thats what you get with a 2 year old on your lap 🙂

Before going to the zoo, I had lots of expectations. I had heard such wonderful comments and recommendations of it being the “world-famous” zoo. The bubble I had built-up just took a big-bang the moment I had a look at the tiger’s den. Also the amount of animals kept seemed a lot less. Its true that the park is too big, but the real-estate has been used for promoting the park. I would have preferred the animals had more room. They all seemed just constrained for space. The good old Mysore Zoo is lot better. Ah! I miss that zoo so much now.

We were done with all the sightings and Nidhi was getting bored. We still had time, so we decided to head to the Imperial Beach near our hotel. It was really hilarious to see her react to the sand on the beach. She wanted to play in the sand, but at the same time kept asking for “tissues” to wipe the sand off her hands. After some time she came to the conclusion that it was “ok” to get dirty here and started enjoying herself. I wanted to get a shot of her in the water and after much persuasion, managed to get her stand in the water. But I didn’t see the big wave coming our way and the moment it hit her, she started crying. “Big” was more from her point of view and the wave was actually a tiny one for us. The level of water had reached her tighs and that was enough for her to get startled. That was first and last visit to the water on the beach. The rest of the time was spent in playing with sand showels that her mom had picked up from the local store.

I spent some time trying to catch some surfers in action. Couldn’t get close enough for the lens. Then started to chase some birds which were flying little low…just to test whether the camera would get them in focus. Got couple of them which turned out pretty well.

The rest of the night was spent dining at an Indian restaurant called Masala Spice of India on 5th Ave in downtown San Diego. Though the price was expensive, the food was really tasty. The ambience was also nice. If you are visiting San Diego, then don’t miss eating at this place. In my opinion our time spent there was worth every dime.

Had a good night sleep and then headed back to home. As expected the traffic was bad, but managed to keep it at 85/90 to get a milage of 31 mpg.

Day 3 set can be accessed here.

San Diego – Day 2

~ Sudhi ~ 3 Comments

The day started off late. I remember my wife telling me that lets head out by 8ish, but I understood that as “lets get-up at 8” 🙂 So it was my fault and she couldn’t do much to get me out of bed soon. Nidhi was ready and was very much happy in getting the license to run around the parking lot of the hotel. In that process managed to get a good shot of her.

We decided to take on Sea World for the day and the first show was the famous Shamu one. I was little disappointed by the size of the arena when compared to the San Antonio’s Sea World. Even the killer whales were smaller in size. Nidhi enjoyed it and thats what counted in the end 🙂

After a quick stop for lunch we did the dolphin’s show. It was nice with all the dolphins jumping out of the water. One of the families from the crowd was invited to get closer with them. The wife was in the thick of action. First she “slipped” and fell into the water. The crowd just went hush with that fall. Everybody was concerned about her safety. Even though all those animals are trained, you never know how they would react to strangers in the pool. And all of a sudden out came 2 dolphins jumping across her. Thats when everybody realized that it was all “staged”. The wife was one of the trainers and they really got the crowd fooled 🙂

Then we headed to the pets show. This was strongly suggested by one of our friends as a not-to-miss show. It was really worth it and I would suggest the same. In order to appreciate it, you got to love pets (dogs, cats etc). Its way too tough to get them trained and these pets do such a wonderful job at all the tricks. We all know that they work for treats, but I’m having difficulty in just getting them on to the treadmill. It was entertaining and Nidhi was all over the dogs after the show.

Had dinner at some local Indian restaurant and finally headed to hotel. The Sea World was good as Nidhi enjoyed every bit of it. But if I’ve to decide between this and the one in San Antonio, then I would vote for the San Antonio Sea World. That park is lot bigger and better at the shows.

Here are some shots from the trip:

2009-05-23_396

..and of course the jumping Shamu

2009-05-23_479

The rest of the set can be accessed here.

San Diego – Day 1

~ Sudhi ~ 5 Comments
We headed out to San Diego around 7 am. One hour late from the scheduled departure time and that was my fault of sleeping an hour late 🙂 Had a quick breakfast at local Noah’s. The drive till LA was just awesome. 2007 Toyota Camry can do 100 mph with absolutely no issues. It was fun weaving through some traffic on the way. It would have been really nice if drivers actually read the sign which says:

Slower traffic keep right

Its just annoying to see somebody drive on I5 at 60 mph and to top that another buddy of his occupying the only other lane. We stopped for a quick break after about covering about 150 of the 500 miles drive. Then we had to stop for lunch at Taste of India in Bakersfield. The food was ok, but very costly though.

Once we reached LA it all started with the rush-hour traffic. Imagine driving only 30 miles in 2 hours…my back was literally crying to take a break. We took a detour and just relaxed in some parking lot of a company.

Reached San Diego at 7:30 PM and all I wanted to do was just hit the bed. I’m so tired with all the driving. More than the physical, its the annoying part of the drive that has drained me.

Before I go, here are couple of shots:

A smiling Nidhi

2009-05-22_377

Fields on the way

2009-05-22_378

Some more

2009-05-22_386

Bird’s nests under a freeway ramp

2009-05-22_389