Trip to Yercaud

The plan:
Last month Shilpa, Sowmya and I were thinking that we need to go somewhere out, excluding all yelders. We thought May 1 and 2nd would be ideal. Then we decided upon place as Yercaud, which is around 200 KM from Bangalore near Salem.

Yercaud is a Hill Town and there are few places on the top of the hill including a Botanical Garden, Lake and boating, Ladies seat a view point to see lit Salem city in the evening, Killiyur Waterfalls, Pagoda point, Sheravarayan temple etc. 2 days would be more than sufficient for it. We decided to start on early morning of 1st May and come back by 2nd evening

The accomodation:
After few hours of browsing we got to know that Hotel Shevaroys is good and within the budget. We called tham immediately and blocked 2 rooms for triple occupancy. It costed Rs. 1500 per room

The Team:
Shilpa, Gowri - My nieces, Yashu - Bhargav - My nephews, Thimmi and I

The carrier:
My elder sister had recently baught Toyota Innova, we decided to take that. But due to elders insistance, we also decide to take Manju, driver as well.

Execution:
As planned we started at around 6 AM. We drove at a decent speed and took a lot of break on the way and enjoyed a lot. Few pics on the way





Stopped at A2B near Hosur and had delicious break fast and played kids games.


We reached Yercaud and checked into Hotel Shevroy. The hotel is very big and decent enough. Loved few architectral points.


After noon we went to the restaurant and found that its crowded like crazy. We went out and had a buffet lunch. Later we went to boating and found even that was crowded like hell. Where ever we went we could see only people. It was May day, and many people had long weekend and planned there. We never felt that we are outside Bangalore and never felt we have come for a trip. It was really awkward for us. We visited Ladies seat and enjoyed a bit by seeing monkeys over there. The view was good from there but again crowd put us down

Next day morning we found a portrait painter and Shilpa, Gowri and Sowmya posed for portrait painting.



Then we went for boating, and today crowd was reduced to half and we enjoyed peddling the boat




The we visited a temple called Shervarayan temple which was also a peak point. But there was lot of crowd and could not go inside the temple. While coming back we found many beautiful places and captured lot of pics..





While coming back to Bangalore we visited my Brother-in-law's farm house and enjoyed fire dance there.



Entire Photo Album:

My Trekearth Photos

See more photos by karthikcs on TrekEarth

Portional Contrasting, a video tutorial

This Adobe Photoshop Video Tutor helps in enhancing imaging using the concept of portion contrasting.

First try with video tutorial

Day out to Innovative Film City

We had visited to Innovative Film City near Bidadi last Sunday (15-Feb-09). We started at around 10 AM and reached there by 10:30 AM. I had enquired about the package/ entry fees etc. Entrance fees is Rs. 50/- per person, which does not include any attraction. You have to pay for each inside. If you wish to take the entire package, it costs you 699/- which is cheaper than paying individually. It covers 11 major attractions.

There are many places to see in side. Entry ticket for each Cartoon city, Dynasaur museum, Miniature city – which kids enjoy a lot. Other attractions like Repley’s believe it or not, Wax museum, Funplex, 4D Movie are enjoyed the most by Teens and college boys/girls. There are attractions like Mini Golf, Go Karting, Aqua World, Mirror Maze and Haunted mansion which even elders can enjoy. This is excellent weekend get away.

 

Watch the Album:

An exposure to ‘exposure settings’

I was discussing with one of my friends regarding exposure settings of a digital Camera, mostly DSLR or DSLR like cameras. In this article I would try to explain concepts of Aperture (F-Stop or F Number), Shutter Speed, ISO, Exposure Compensation, P, A, S and M modes.

Exposure:

Capturing a good picture is all about good lighting. Its not what light “you” see, its the light what camera sees. All the entities listed above are one way or the other linked with light that Camera sees. We call it as “Exposure”. A well lit picture is called well exposed picture, poor lighting makes it under-exposed.

Let us now try to see how all the above factors affect the exposure of a picture.

Aperture:

Aperture is the width of the lens opening, when you release the shutter. Larger the aperture, more the light goes inside the camera. Apertures are measured in F-Stops or F-Numbers (F/4 or F/5.6 and so on). Smaller the F-Number, larger the aperture. So, if you set aperture to be F/2.8 a lot of light is allowed inside. If you set it at F/22, very small amount of light is let in, when shutter is released.  Learn more about about aperture here

Impacts of Aperture:

1. Aperture impacts the DOF (Depth of Field) of the picture. Higher the aperture (Small F-number) Shallower the DOF. Read more about it here

Shutter Speed:

Shutter speed determines how long the shutter is opened, when you release it. Higher the shutter exposure (measured in seconds), longer the shutter is opened and hence more light is allowed inside the camera. Example: As daylight is well lit, and hence shutter speed can be as high as 1/1000s, 1/2000s . Of course, this goes in conjunction with other exposure parameters likes Aperture, ISO etc. In poor light – Night shots, indoor shots, you might have to lower to 1/10 or even it can several seconds. But you should keep in mind the picture can be shaken as we go for long exposure.

Learn more about shutter speed here

Impacts of Shutter Speed:

1. Scene can be frozen with very short exposure. This can be used for moving objects. Example – Deepavali
2. We can get some dramatic effects of water falls or other moving objects with moderately long exposure. Example – Waterfalls, Bubbleman
3. Long exposure can cause shaky pictures. Tripod or Image Stabilized Lenses can reduce this problem. Example– Deepavali Group
4. Long exposure when not needed can also cause over exposed pictures Example – Flower Pot

 

ISO (Sensitivity):

ISO represents the sensitivity of the sensor. The concept of ISO was originated from film cameras. Each film would be having defined sensitivity measured in ISO equivalent number. In digital cameras the sensitivity is controlled digitally, which are equivalent to that of film roles. ISO Rating 100 being very low sensitivity and 3200, which is highly sensitive to the light. Thumb rule is, better lit place use less ISO and poor lit place (night, indoors) use higher ISO rating.

Learn more about ISO here

Impacts of ISO:

1. Higher the ISO, camera becomes very sensitive and starts recording unwanted light particles called Noise. Example Writing with experience
2. Moderately high ISO helps to get better exposure in bad lighting
3. Better to use lower ISO in well lit conditions. Example Day light

Mode of Shooting (P,A,M,S):

After understanding basics of above exposure parameters, let us try to understand how to use different modes. Which one to choose when. Before going further, we need to understand that camera exposes the light into the sensor based on all the settings mentioned above. So the net result depends on the current settings of the camera. The objective is to control these parameter effectively to get good picture.

NOTE: It is very difficult to manage all these parameter ourselves (M Mode). So most of the manufactures have given facility to fix few of the parameter and leave rest to the camera, so that it determines what should be the correct value of other parameters in that respective lighting condition.

Mode A  (Aperture priority Mode) : In this mode you can capture a picture with fixed aperture. Camera will determine the appropriate shutter speed for that lighting condition and ISO setting. This is very useful when you want a specific DOF OR when you need a bokeh (Background blurr), you might want to use a specific wide aperture.

Mode S (Shutter Priority Mode): In this mode you can fix the shutter speed and let camera calculate the correct aperture for the current lighting conditions and ISO. This is useful when you know what should be the shutter speed. For example, you like to take a picture with long exposure say 8 Seconds, Night shot. Example Nighty Road. Another example would be, if you want to have some movement effect in your frame, instead of freezing. Example Kick the ball

Mode P (Programmable Auto Mode): This is favorite mode of many photographers. This would give blend of both A and S. You can change either S or A and other parameter is calculated automatically.

Mode M (Manual Mode): In this mode, camera switches its brain off. It is completely in your control. You can set Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO, White Balance and what not. This is not so easy unless you know what happens when you select a particular value. This is also an excellent way you learn about exposure settings. Takes loads of photos in M Mode and understand how you Camera Sees a frame.

Exposure Compensation:

With any of these above settings you can use exposure compensations which usually ranges from – n EV to +n EV. In my camera it is –5EV to +5EV. Suppose you do your settings at 0EV and capture a scene and found that it was under exposed. Now to improve the capture you can either change one of Aperture, Shutter or ISO  OR you can simply change Exposure Compensation to +1EV. Camera automatically changes what ever it needs to get better exposed image. In reverse if the scene was washed out (Over exposed), you can make it –1EV to reduce the exposure.

 

Hope this helps…. Please provide your sincere feedback

Getting selective Focus – PS Tutor

Many of my friends keep asking how I get selective focus. One way is it get a low depth of field (DOF) by using broader aperture. Broader aperture indicates smaller F Number. This is while capturing the image. Please read more about apertures and DOF in this link .

In this post I will try to explain simple post processing steps in Photoshop to get selective focus.

Objective: Get Selective Focus

Idea: Idea is very simple. Focused area of the image has more sharpness and remaining area would be less sharper. Human eyes tend to see sharper objects. So we can use this technique to cheat human eye to simulate shallow DOF during PP

 

Step 1: Open the image you want to Post Process (PP) in Photoshop (PS). You can see in this image  DOF is not that shallow.

Duplicate the layer. Always do this step in PS as practice. You will not lose the actual image, if anything goes wrong later.

Step 2: Select quick  selection tool (W) to select the area you want to focus. In case, you want to spend more time in precisely selecting the area, you can do in multiple stages. You can unselect by holding Alt key. You can also save the selection using the Menu – Select  - Save Selection and provide a name. Note, this is the key step in this Workflow.

Step 3: Increase the brightness of the area of interest. As this is selected, only selected area will be brighten up, also increase the sharpness of the selected region using Smart Sharpen

Step 4: We are done with area of interest. Now we need to concentrate on Negative space. To select negative space, invert the selection

 

Step 5: Now blurr the negative space and reduce the brightness, so that eye does not really catch that area  first.

 

Step 6: Final Image, which shows a shallow DOF. – OR – Selective Focusing

From Windows Live Writer

We can also use Motion blur instead of Gaussian Blur in case of object is moving. You can see an example

Converting your Photo into Sketch

There was an excellent tutorial on DPS to convert your photo into sketch. I tried few of my pics. See the effect. I am trying to make an action (Automatic conversion)

Slumdog Millionaire – A Review

With a lot of hype created, we saw this movie this weekend. The tone of my review would have been entirely different if Danny Boyle had not shown India with such disgusting manner.  I can’t deny that he has shown truth, but there was no necessity to picturize and highlight India in that crude way. He shows how beggars are made from street kids, how they steal footwears and other stuffs from tourist places. My point is, there was no relevance for such scenes in context of the story at all. On the other hand there is no single positive feature shown on our society. I felt as if, this guy’s objective was to show dark face of our country and he had knitted the story around it.

Observe the following situation and dialog sequence:

A tourist (American) comes to visit Dhobi ghat. By the time drives escorts them back some mischief kids would have stolen the tyres and car driver finds on kid and beats him horribly. The crying kid begs in front of foreign tourist saying this is “True India” and tourist says now we show how True Americans behave and gives him $ 100 bill. What the heck.

This being directed by a Hollywood director and gathered such a hype would be watched by many foreign nationals. Why should they convey such an image to all of them. There is no passiveness in the movie at all. Also our kids and society also lose confidence and lose whatever pride we are having on the nation.

TNT – A Book Review

The Next Ticket, is a not-yet-released book. I am feeling proud to write a review on this book as it is authored by my good friend Sridhar Machani.

The hero goes for a foreign trip without a destination and the whole story gets revealed in a nice manner. Story takes a twist suddenly and the pace becomes little faster and hero actually goes into complex maze of many people and many cities. He finds handful of opportunities to get out of it, but for some reasons (which Sridhar needs to explain) he goes into it again and again.

Last few pages are of novel run very fast, it could have been little slower. The novel is written in the first person and the narration of minute details really given a punch to the reader

Sridhar has taken as challenge and to complete the book with tight schedule and its really an achievement. He is also having plans to have iterative approach in building next few versions of the book. I heartily congratulate him and wish him all the best for publishing TNT

Workflow for Borders and watermarks

Pre-Requisites:

You need to understand the basics of Actions in Photoshop (PS). Please go through the following blog post for the same

Creating a Photoshop Action

...Are you in the mood for some Action? I’m talking Photoshop Actions :) They are the perfect solution to handle tasks with one click. An Action is a recording of several Photoshop operations and commands. Once the Action is created, one click is all it takes and the task will be executed. It’s very powerful, can save you heaps of time and it’s ac...

Step 1:

Create a new Action Set of your own and create a new action within it.

Step 2: 

Record following steps in your new Action. I have named it as “Watermark_Karthik”

Step 3:

Increase the canvas by 5px width and 5px height with color as Black. Increase all sides

(Find Canvas Size from Menu -> Image -> Canvas Size)

Step 4:

Picasa Content

Increase the canvas by 5% width and 5% height with color as White. Increase all sides

Step 5:

Increase the canvas by 5% height with color as White. Increase only bottom part. We can add text here.

Step 6:

Increase the canvas by 10px width and 10px height with color as Black. Increase all sides. This would serve as final border of the image.

Step 7:

Step 8:

Select background layer and merge visible

Step 9:

The final Action should show something as below:

Step 10:

We can re-use this Action as many times as needed by click on Action tool bar (Alt + F9)

Step 11:

We can also batch edit images by selecting

 

Hope this tutorial helps you to create the border and a water mark

Selected Shots from Sakaleshpur trip

Trip to Sakaleshpur-Chikmagalur

The plan:

It was during Anil's Marriage that we had initial discussion of going out somewhere during Christmas vacation. Initially we thought our family, Sushma's family and Srinand's family would make it. We thought Anil can not come as new couple would have planned for their honey moon. Due to unfortunate circumstances, it so happened that new couple could not make honey moon trip. On the other hand Srinand's family could not make it sue to new born. So it was more solid during second week of Dec that We both, Sush-Gautam and Aruna-Anil would be the team

More planning:

We initially had plans to make it somewhere in Chikmagalur or near by Shimoga region. Most of us did not want heavy adventures but loved to enjoy the nature. After a day of research we found coffee valley Home Stay near Sakaleshpur. I bought most of the members buy-in and thought of booking for 2 days. It was turning out to be little expensive and that's the time I realized that we could expand the trip to somewhere else as well restricting Coffee Valley stay for 1 day. Initially it was told that per person per day it would be Rs. 2000/-. Then they reduced a bit and within our planned budget. I booked for one day and planned Kemmannugundi for day 2.

The next we regarding vehicle. Gautam arranged his brother's Bolero four wheel drive for the trip and we decided self driving.

The schedule:

As trip was little tight, we decided to leave very early in the morning like, at around 5AM and reach Coffee Valley Estate at around 11 AM. On the way we visited Manjurabad fort and Bhimeshvara falls, near Sakaleshpur, . At the estate had lunch and rested till evening. Visited Sun Set spot which is very near to the estate and had Camp Fire and played some games like Dumb-Chardes, Adarsha Dampathigalu etc. Had dinner and went to bed. Most highlighted part of the day was "Food" and Host Mrs&Mr.Manjuth's hospitality. We just loved the place.

Host also appointed Chidananda, Chidu as we called him for all our comforts. Next day we all woke up at around 8 AM and had hot bath. Finished tasty breakfast and started towards visiting all beautiful places near by, guided by Chidu. We visited an old temple of Lord Bhairaweshwara and a peaceful lake nearby, where there were hundreds of hungry fishes. We fed them with some Mandakki. Captured hundreds of snaps and moved towards an unnamed waterfalls.

Spent couple of hours in the falls and enjoyed a lot and captured some stunning pics. Went back to estate for yet another tasty meals, which was actually not in the package. We were so impressed by the food, and told the hosts to make it for us and we would pay extra for the same. We checked-out after a series of Couple-Shots and moved towards Chikmagalur. Reached there by evening and rested for the day. We hesitantly stayed in average hotel called Raja Mahal in I.G road. It was not so clean place. But it was ok to spend a night. Most funny thing was their eye-catching multi-colored rooms. :)

Next day was again a hectic day. We visited Here-magalur Sri Rama temple. Priested by famous orator Sri. Heremagalur Kannan. We spent a lot of with him and enjoyed the stay there. Then we started towards Kemmannu Gundi. We decided to directly go to the Hebbe Falls. It was extra-ordinary drive on the rocky mountains to reach the leg of the falls. We started very late from there and reached Bangalore at late night by 1:30 AM

 

Photos:

Enjoy some of the photos of the trip:

Sunflower field on the way

 

From Sakaleshpur 08

From Sakaleshpur 08

 

Manjurabad Fort

 

From Sakaleshpur 08

 

 

From Sakaleshpur2 08

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coffee Valley Estate:

 

From Sakaleshpur2 08

 

From Sakaleshpur 08

From Sakaleshpur 08

 

 

Falls near Hanbal

From Sakaleshpur2 08

 

Hebbe Falls @Kemmannugundi

From Sakaleshpur2 08

 

Link for entire Album1 and Album2

ನಮ್ ದೇಶದ problemsಉ

ನಮ್ ದೇಶದ problemsಉ ಒಂದಾ ಎರಡ. ರಾಜಕಾರಿಣಿಗಳು ತಮ್ಮ ವೋಟಿಗೋಸ್ಕರ ಅಫಜಲ್ ಗುರು ಅಂಥವರಿಗೆ supreme court order ಆಗಿದ್ರೂ ನೇಣ್ ಹಾಕಕ್ಕೆ ತಡೀತಾರೆ. ಅಂಥ ದರಿದ್ರ hard core terrorists ಗಳಿಗೆ ಲಕ್ಷಾಂತರ ಹಣ ಸುರಿದು legal ಆಗಿ support ಕೊಡ್ತಾರೆ. so called ಅಲ್ಪ ಸಂಖ್ಯಾತರು ಬಾಂಗ್ಲಾ/ ಪಾಕ್ ಗಡಿಗಳಿಂದ್ ನಮ್ ದೇಶದೊಳಗೆ ನುಸುಳಿಕೊಂಡು ಬರೋದನ್ನ ನಮ್ಮೋರು ದೂರ್ದಲ್ಲಿ ಕೂತ್ಕೊಂಡು ನೋಡಿ ಮಜಾ ತಗೋತಾರೆ. Infact ಹಾಗೆ ಬರೋರಿಗೆ, ration card, voters ID, Driving Licence ನಮ್ ದೇಶದವರಿಗಿಂತ ಬೇಗ ಕೊಡಿಸ್ತಾರೆ. ಯಾಕೆ .. ದರಿದ್ರ ವೋಟ್ ಗೋಸ್ಕರ. ನಮ್ಮ ದೇಶದ so called ಅಲ್ಪ ಸಂಖ್ಯಾತರು "no more" ಅಲ್ಪ ಸಂಖ್ಯಾತರಾಗುವ ಸಮಯ ದೂರ ಉಳಿದಿಲ್ಲ.

ಇಲ್ಲೇ ಹುಟ್ಟಿ ಬೆಳೆದು ದೊಡ್ಡವರಾದ್ರೂ,  ಅವರಿಗೆ ನಮ್ಮ ದೇಶದ ಮೇಲೆ ಕಿಂಚಿತ್ತೂ ಅಭಿಮಾನ ಇರಲ್ಲ. ಅಲ್ಲೆಲ್ಲೋ ಸದ್ದಾಂ ಸತ್ರೆ ಇಲ್ಲಿ ನಮ್ ಶಿವಾಜಿ ನಗರದಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರತಿಭಟಣೆ ಮಾಡ್ತಾರೆ. ಪಾಕಿಸ್ತಾನ cricket ನಲ್ಲಿ ಗೆದ್ರೆ ಪಟಾಕಿ ಹೊಡೆದು ಕುಣಿದಾಡ್ತಾರೆ. ಯಾಕೆ ಇದೆಲ್ಲ ನಮ್ಮವರಿಗೆ ಕಾಣಿಸೋಲ್ವ ? ಅಥವಾ ಜಾಣ ಕುರುಡಾ ?

ಮೊನ್ನೆ ನುಸುಳಿದ terrorists ಗಳು ಇಲ್ಲಿಯವರ ಬೆಂಬಲ ಇಲ್ಲದೆ ಅಷ್ಟೆಲ್ಲ accurate ಆಗಿ ತಾಜ್/ಓಬಿರಾಯ್ ನ ಮೂಲೆ ಮೂಲೆ ಸೇರಿ ನೂರಾರು ಜನನ್ನ ಕೊಲ್ಲಕ್ಕೆ ಸಾಧ್ಯ ಆಗ್ತಿತ್ತ ?

ಇದಕ್ಕೆಲ್ಲ ಉತ್ತರ, revolution. ಜನ ಎದ್ದರೆ ದೇಶ ಉಳಿದೀತು.

ಸ್ವಾಮಿ ವಿವೇಕಾನಂದರು ಆವತ್ತು ಹೇಳಿದ್ ಮಾತು: "ಏಳಿ ಎದ್ದೇಳಿ" ಅಂಥ. ಅದನ್ನ ನಾವು ಈವಾಗ್ಲಾದ್ರು ಮಾಡ್ಬೇಕು.

Managing your shots..

I was always wondering how great photographers manage their huge number of digital photos. How do they pick "The-one-great-shot" they captured on "The-one-great-moment". How do they group all similar photos together. How do they gather all extreme statistics.

In the same lines I was reading this article in DPS. I was really inspired by this article and started using Light Room 2.1 from Adobe.  It has all that you want and would expect in a photo management tool. I can tag them, give captions, sort based on tens of meta data information. Group similar photos. All that I can do pretty fast.

Now, more or less I have built my basic catalog. I was really worried to see that I have got more than 13,000 photos (Not everything is my shot anyway). I could tag more or less everything and indexes have been built. I can now search based on content/ focal length/ aperture/ lens/ camera/ date/ tags/ treatment/ exposure settings/ flash status etc..

Light room also integrates seamlessly with PS4, that makes my life still more easier for editing my shots.

What is terrorism ??

Dear friends, let me picturize a situation here before we come to the actual point of discussion. There is someone near your house, who is throwing stones at your window pane everyday - intentionally.  First time you felt that it might be an accident and ignored the act. But, it repeats again and again, very frequently. Now, you become little diligent and observe and found that the awful act was being planned and conducted by your neighbor to destroy your house and your family peace. You also found that police could not help on this because your neighbor has a very good relationship with them. There is no one who can help you now legally.

I want to know what will be your next step ?

 

I am not justifying what Sadhvi Prajna Singh and Lt. Col. Purohit did in Malegoan. But, please let me know what is so wrong in revolting against such terrorism when nothing works, legally/ politically ? Society like India which has been immersed in slavery for thousands of years, will never understand this. More over our so called Hindu culture is so soft and broad minded that we never want to hurt anyone. SORRY!! It is not true. If you see Indian History and Mythology, all our Gods and Avataras of Gods have taken place to kill the evil and protect the Dharma. Now, if God is not helping us, we have to help ourselves.

Dushta Shikshana and Shishta Rakshana was always the concept.

Please read through this month Outlook Edition, French author FRANCOIS GAUTIER has written the facts and how cowards we are..

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20081110&fname=BMalegaon+Terror+%28F%29&sid=2