Split panel canvas

Over the years we have printed many of the photographs as canvases. Recently I have seen a lot of my friends have these "split panel" canvas. They look great and have a natural shadowning effect and your eye is drawn to it. 

Except for one friend who printed his own picture, most of them get stock photos printed. Then Facebook suggested (why I do not know) a split photograph of Ganesha and Buddha to be purchased from a nichecanvas company. Both me and San went through some of those designs and were amazed by the quality of the images. 

Then I told San "I like this, but would rather have one of my own photographs printed like this". She said "show it to me on how it will look before we order".

That is a challenge to put it in perspective because the image size and how big it is on the wall, the image color  and how it goes the paint on your wall and the effect of the fixed lighting (we are not going to repaint or redo lighting for this canvas!) are not easy to visualize for everyone.

Kept searching for split canvas prints and could not find anything for a few days where you could take your own photograph and do a 5 panel split. Costco does a 4 panel as do at least three other companies. Most folks do rectangular shapes split with the perfect rectangle. Some do a 4 panel stagger (two up and two down, but all four panels are the same size). 

Elephantstock gave me an option to customize it and clinch the deal with the family because I could show them how it would actually look on the wall. I could upload different photos and show which one would look great. Fortunately the background wall color on their default was close to our wall and they had it above a dining table too!

The trial photo as visualized on Elephantstock website..

and the real deal on our wall..

Everyone in the house has given it a two thumbs up as it adds a lot of vibrant color to the room. 

Someday we would be able to upload a picture of our own living room into a software, add the photograph and visualize it as a split panel with different sizes and then order it. That day will also come soon. At the end of the day there are many families where the photographer does not have the only or final say in the printing process.. especially when he lives with three women. so the burden is on the canvas printing company to "help" sell the idea!

ps. the original photograph was from Joshua National park visit during Labor day 2012. It was 3 photographs merged to create a HDR image.

The traveling Yogi

Got back to US last Sunday. Traveling again tomorrow. It is an interesting life when airports, lounges, planes become a routine part of your life. I spent more time talking to Uber drivers sometimes than people I love and care about. All this will change soon when some accomplishments take a grander stage. 

In the meantime, one has to do what one can to cope with this "lifestyle". My recent trip to India following a business trip, albeit short and sweet has 1000's of photographs and videos, great memories, places of interest, conversations with friends and family that went from sweet to bizarre. All great blog topics, but they have to wait.

In the last 7 days, my plan was to do as much yoga as possible to make up for the last three weeks and the coming week, have only home cooked meals and resist the temptation to eat out at least for this week when I am home and catch up on everything else.

The home cooked meal part was a success. . . 

I can now make a tomato rasam and a cabbage curry with reasonable consistancy. Cooking can be cathartic and have decided that from now on, will be subjecting the family to my cooking at least once a week. There was also some Podalangai Kootu (no pictures) that turned out very well! 

Cooking part was okay. The catch up on everything else was not. I did go to the hospital to get a wart treated and that kept me in an irritated state for almost two days. No pain.. but just plain irritation. Don't know who came up with the idea of treating warts with liquid nitrogen, but we should come up with better ways. This was my first wart and first such treatment. While it was interesting and funny when they did the treatment, it was not funny after I came home. Just plain annoying, like you have an alligator clip squeezing your finger constantly and biting into it. Then caught a bug from a co-worker on Thrusday to the point where my nose was blocked completely. 

Decided to go to Yoga class anyways as usual and things opened up a bit. Today my nose and lungs feel normal again. My morning class went so swimmingly well that I decided to go back in the evening. Both the teachers knew what I was up against and both of them promptly ignored it like good teachers do and proceeded to kick my ass. 

As usual learned a lot in todays class. Sometimes I think I have fixed a mistake only to realize that nothing has been fixed. Have a rule at work for myself and people who work with me. It is okay to make mistakes, but it is not okay to make the same mistake over and over again. Somehow that rule was not followed in Yoga class today. 

It is time to videotape myself doing some poses to see how I change from aligned to crooked. I check at the start of the pose and the guy in the mirror is perfectly aligned. When coming out of the pose, something has horribly gone wrong. Where and how this happens is a mystery that will soon be resolved. There is lot of time in hotel rooms and an iPhone camera handy! 

On a side note, I finally managed to get my hands on this book that was out of print for a long time "A systematic course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya" by Swami Satyananda Saraswati of the Bihar school of Yoga. It is by far the most comprehensive book on Yoga that I have come across. It is a Ph.D. thesis on Yoga and Kriya. It reads like one for sure!

My college library has records of how many people check out a certain book. My doctoral thesis was checked out only 8 times in the 10 years since I wrote it (that was the last I checked). Doctoral thesis make for dry reading.  Maybe this book while thorough and technical and detailed is lost on folks who are not into Yoga terminology and that is why it went out of print. Nevertheless, strongly recommend this book to get a perpective on why condition the body and the mind and the purpose behind it all. 

Will start blogging about our recent adventures next week. Until then, ta ta!

Elephant Seal outlook - Point Reyes day trip

Last weekend, our plan was to go see the super bloom of flowers that is moving north over the California hillsides. This thing was so huge it was visible from space, per reports from the missus!

We went on a day trip with the cousins to do multiple things.. Have a trip with family after a long time, go see the elephant seals at Point Reyes and catch the flowers on the hillsides. We did all three..  

The view from the elephant seal lookout trail was amazing. You could see the seals nursing pups and the visibility was great. 

you can see the seals basking in the bottom of the picture.. thousands of them! 

Here is a slideshow of the views from the trail in HDR..

There was a fourth thing that was on the cards.. Take a picture of San in the fields of flowers.. Call it the DDLJ Kajol shot if you will.. I had to work with winds that could knock you over (my cap flew off in the wind and had to be retrieved!) and it was difficult to hold the camera steady. It was bright and sunny, but you want to understand the concept of wind chill, you should visit Point Reyes! 

The photos in a sea of flowers with the sea in the background were not a roaring success, but it got a "satisfactory" grade! 

A slide show of the seals and the seal colony.

And a few videos .. some timelapse of the waves at the lookout and others of the seals and their noises!

Strongly recommend this for a day trip in early May! 

Next time I should go with a nice jacket!