Archive of #Photography Posts

I had some pictures from a short visit to Napa Valley in California from a while back that were just sitting on the computer, waiting to be processed and published.

There are three photos I especially like - some grapes ready for harvesting, the wine tasting bar, and a shot of vineyards along some hills ... had to drive around Napa a bit to find this particular shot, since the classic shot of vineyards on rolling hills is apparently not really seen in Napa, but in Sonoma, which is further out. Maybe I'll go there the next time I am in that area.

I usually get some emails asking about my gear and what I do in terms of processing, so here goes... I shoot with a Canon Digital Rebel XTi (see my about page for more). Since I shoot in RAW mode, I get to manually do the processing/conversion to .jpg, and I do that using Adobe's Lightroom, which is really nice. It does take time, but the results are quite good. In addition to basic settings like exposure and white balance, I'll play around with the color curve sometimes, or the specific color intensities. A couple of my favorite settings are the clarity and vibrance levels. For more information on these and other sophisticated controls offered by Lightroom, you'll want to check out something like the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book. I'm always finding something new while reading or processing a batch of photos.

My wife, Seema, and I took a couple of weeks of vacation to tour Australia, before I presented at TechEd. Rather than simply posting to my photo gallery as usual, this time around I picked out a few photos on the flight back to recount the highlights of the trip. You can click on any of these thumbnails to see larger versions, or see the rest of the photos in the Australia and New Zealand photo albums. Enjoy! I certainly enjoyed taking them!

Like most tourists heading down under, Sydney was our first stop on the trip. The Opera House is certainly the center of attraction offering different views from different vantage points around Circular Quay and on different ferry routes in the area. The highlight of our trip here was perhaps seeing Opera House lit at night from the Sydney Harbor Bridge, with the full moon shining overhead.

In addition to walking around the main touristy spots, we also took the time to visit some of the beaches in the area accessible by bus and ferry. In particular, Bondi beach on the east, which is quite famous, as well as other lesser known, but equally picturesque spots such as Manly beach offered a number of photo opportunities and walking tours.

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Each April, we have the Tulip Festival in Skagit Valley. Its sort of a northwest ritual to head north in April, when the flowers bloom, walk around in the fields, and see vast expanses of tulips in all sorts of colors. We went there a couple of weeks ago, and were lucky to be there at just about the right time, when most of the fields flowers were just about blooming.

This winter has been one heck of a winter - rain storms, wind storms, a blizzard and now a snow storm! The weather in Puget Sound has certainly been crazy to say the least. Lots of chaos on the roads... we couldn't make it back home that night, given a couple of trecherous hills and slopes along any route up the plateau. We're certainly hoping the weather turns around a corner soon.

Here's a slideshow from the local newstation with pictures from the chaos.

Despite all that, the one nice thing about a snow fall is the scenery afterwards. This time around, we also had sun and clear blue skies to follow, creating a winter wonderland of sorts. It was definitely cold, but a walk with my camera was well-worth it. The best landscapes to be shot were at a golf course near home. In addition I also tried to get some macro shots of the snow and ice. Check them out here.

I just realized its been quite while since I posted any new pictures... I have some more ready from my backlog, so I'll be sharing those in the coming days.

I got some more pictures - the ones I took in Las Vegas after the MIX conference - ready for publishing during my break from work following the conference... I thought I'd post these before returning to the regularly scheduled asp.net/atlas programming you typically find on this blog :-)

This time there are two photo sets here for your browsing enjoyment...

The first contains the shots I took at the Venetian and along the strip (which resulted in quite a bit of walking that day...). Personally, my favorites are the breathtaking fountains at Bellagio.

The second set contains shots from the next day in the equally awesome, but somewhat lesser known, neon-free Red Rock Canyon which is just about 20 miles west of the strip. The sun and the weather really cooperated on that day, making it a fun photo day.

Enjoy!

I did some sightseeing in India following my recent India user group tour. The theme of the tour turned out to be forts and temples, providing a small glimpse into the gradeur of India (or what I attempted to capture with my camera). Coincidently, the in-flight magazine for the domestic airlines for February focused on forts in India, so it gave me a couple of good ideas for places to visit.

In Hyderabad, I visited the Golconda fort, a small fort right on the outskirts of the city, with ruins dating to the 1500s.

The fort at Kumbalgarh (near Udaipur, Rajasthan) is older... dating to the 1400s, and was one of the most impentratable forts, being located in the midst of the Aravelli mountains. With 35km of walls, this fort supposedly has the 2nd longest wall in the world.

The third fort I visited was the Mehrangarh fort in Jodhpur which has a beautiful castle within the walls.

The Jain temples at Ranakpur provide another sense of the gradeur - architectural beauty and amazingly intricate marble work - with extensive set of carvings on pillars and ceilings.

I spent some time this weekend getting a batch of fall pictures from an October vacation ready, before it gets too long after fall.

While visiting my parents in California, we drove to Plumas County (about 150 mi north of Sacramento) to catch some fall colors. Apparently the fall colors are a highlight of this little known area. As mentioned by the locals at the visitor center, the red and yellow fall colors are exaggerated further by the greens from evergreens in the midst adding some contrast. We were quite lucky - supposedly the colors peaked during the weekend that we visited. They were really spectacular.

This album is a bit larger than my usual batches with about 70 pictures... anyway, enjoy!

After a very long time, I am posting something non-technical with the goal of bringing back some variety on this blog. Its also been long since I posted any of my photos, so I thought I'd start by posting a relatively smaller set of pictures than usual.

I found some really beautiful water droplets on leaves, grass blades, and flowers left behind after a midnight rainfall during a morning jog. I had to return with my camera...

By the way, this is my first photo set where I started shooting in RAW mode, and the differences in terms of what you can do with your pictures in terms of processing workflow is quite simply amazing. I think I am a RAW convert... this obviously entails a new wave of learning, and yet more storage requirements... both seem to be a given with digital photography.

Recently I've gotten emails from folks asking to buy some of my photographs. Honestly, I've never considered selling them before (so they came as surprise, admittedly a pleasant one). Publishing the photos here was just a means of sharing them, and photography has just been a part-time hobby... now I wonder if I should consider putting them up for sale (or keep it as a background thought for now... I've seen many other photos of a more professional calibre).

Last weekend, we were at Pike Place Market in Seattle, and we saw a number of people selling photos (some really nice ones). Seema was suggesting it would be fun to try and do the same.

Gotta think if I want to pursue this... I wonder what is involved, how you go about doing this. Any ideas?

As mentioned in the last post, Vic, Daniel and I hung out in Rio for a day (when we finally got some sunshine in an otherwise unusually cloudy and rainy set of days!) Just posted a representative set of pictures. Check 'em out...

Hope you enjoyed the San Diego pictures I posted a couple weeks back. Here's the second installment as promised: a sampling of the pictures taken at the Wild Animal Park. Most of them were clicked while riding their railway safari tour.


Be sure to check out the gorillas... they're probably the most humorous ones of the whole set. :-)

Here are some of the shots I took following the TechEd. I also have an upcoming second set from the Wild Animal Park. For now, hope you enjoy these...

Finally getting around to posting another set of photos. These were taken while driving up north along Highway 1 after attending the PDC. Incidently, these were the first round of shots I clicked using my new Canon EOS300D Digital Rebel.

I've been meaning for quite some time to publish some of the photos I've taken. A few select photos are now online, along with a random one that shows up each time you visit my homepage.

Check 'em out... add some comments... and I'll be adding new pictures as I go along.