A weekend in HDR among other things...

Last weekend my sister in law visited us and we went on a local bay area tour of sorts. While the people pictures end up on Facebook.. the Nature pictures and select pictures of me.. end up here! 

There is always an incentive to write a blog post to chronicle local travels, no matter how many times we have visited the place, if we have something new to show.. 

 While editing the pictures where yours truly is smiling, one thought kept coming to my mind.. I look like someone.. but it is not my dad. Six seven years ago, I used to look like a carbon copy of my dad when he was that age.. this time the smile was different. The percentages of "knowingness: sarcasm : resignation" was different.. It was like the basic composition of my face had changed to a different part of that ternary phase diagram. After staring at it for a long time, it struck me! 

I am slowly turning into the next version of my only maternal uncle aka "Ambi Mama"! At first I thought, it must be the receeding hairline, but NO! There is more to this than hairline. Going to take a shot of me with my rudhraksham and towel and match the color balance and you will see soon.. 

As always.. one thing leads to another and before you know it, a post that started off as a weekend in HDR suddenly changed to my facial resemblence to Ambi mama.. Let's get back on topic.. 

 HDR pictures.. 

 This was really one beautiful evening to be out there. Full moon, perfect weather and most important of all, great company! 

This time I took my camera, but did not have the filter kit.. Next time we visit, going to throw a dark ND filter in front of the lens and take a longer exposure shot to blur the waves.. 

That weekend hopefully starts off some travel with family and is a harbinger of better pictures to come this year! 

Blue Angels

We did not really enjoy the blue angels show this year as much as last .. but did get a few great pictures with Alcatraz in the backdrop. 

Last year we could not find parking and were outside the city hall. This year we succumbed to the city fleecing and paid a good 30 bucks to park near Pier 39 so we could watch the planes go between the Pier and Alcatraz.

The crowd was overwhelmingly a "smoking" crowd and there was nothing we could do. If it is one or two folks you can request them to kindly move away, but if it is a group of 15-20 people around you lighting up, what do you do?

You hope the show gets over fast and you get a few good pictures!

 

and my favorite.. a shot that was accidentally taken by tracking the planes towards the sun. Managed to salvage it using the HDR toning utility in photoshop that gave this a cool effect!

Next year we watch them live on TV! 

A trip to Sausalito

Last weekend we decided to drive to Sausalito, thanks to NPR. Apparently the storm had moved over the bay area and it was supposed to be an extremely good visibility day to see the golden gate bridge and also the road down to Sausalito was going to be kept open over the weekend.

So off we drove and had a great time. Got to take some pictures of the bridge, then the kids spent two hours at the Kids discovery museum and we ended up driving around the cute downtown in Sausalito and had some great food at a Nepalese restaurant called "Taste of the Himalayas"

It was an afternoon well spent with something for everyone in the family!

A few photographs from the trip.

Separate posts on the museum trip and tiffin experience later...

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