Swami Narayan Temple, LA

On the Labor day weekend (09/01/2013), LA was pretty hot and we decided not to visit any "Tourist" places as they always turned out to be over crowded. Ever since we knew that LA has a Swamy Narayan temple, Kamakshi (my wife) wanted visit the place. We started at around 5:30pm and it took us almost 1hour to reach there. By the time we reached, sun started settling down through the clouds and temperature was pleasant.

I was amazed to see the craftsmanship and cultural inspiration within the work. From each rock and stone there is so much detail, this is a great tribute to some of the beautiful features and inspirations of India.

It was a perfect timing to take evening long shutter photos. There is some maintenance going on due to which lights at the rightside foundation were not turned on. I liked these pictures hope you will like it too.

Temple Address:
15100 Fairfield Ranch
Chino Hills, CA 91709

Fruits...yummmm

Ever since I bought a plexiglass (Acrylic sheet) for the table top photography, one of the thing I always wanted to try was take pictures of fruit slices by back lighting them through the plexiglass. So far I was very lazy to start the set up but today I decided to do it anyways...so brought some fruits from a local grocery store and gave a try.

I’ve seen shots like this a many a times in the trade publications and in various food books....in fact I was very much inspired by the concept. These types of shots always interested me, but I never found the opportunity to do one myself.

The challenge was to back lit the fruit slices....I thought it would have been nice if I had a glass top coffee table .....so after thinking a while I end up using a dust bin (its a new one and never been utilized...so perfect candidate !). I used two white papers inside the bin and kept the plexiglass on top of it. It served two purposes, one- it act like a table top by holding the plexiglass and second, it act like a soft box because I placed one of my strobes inside the bin which was my main light to back lit the fruits. After having some trial shots, I cut the fruits slices and kept on the glass...and here are the pics...I am very happy with the results...so Saturday was busy and productive !!

Camera: Canon T1i
Kit lens 18-55mm
f stop between 11 to 4

2 flashes - one in the bin, power 1/4 and other on umbrella stand, power 1/8
White reflector (foam board) on right side

One good lighting video..

If you want to learn more about how effective is flash photography and how you should use it here is the good video I come across.

Double Exposure: Canon vs. Nikon

Today I came across this video and I just loved it ...shooting with Camera ...very creative.

here is making of this video...

Long shutter speed..I'm Lovin' It !

Last week I bought a new tripod Manfrotto 190XPROB and now am obsessed to take long shutter speed shots. Its not that I did not take slow speed shots but now I am having a new tripod so it forced me to go out  and try some shots. Here are couple of pics I took in Fred Hesse park nearby Torrance, CA...I'm lovin it !

I thinks this is a good location where I can plan for star-trail shots....so the next toy I want to buy is Intervelometer so that I can try some timelapses.

Locaion: Fred Hesse Junior Community Park, Torrance CA
f/10, ISO 400, 30sec

These are some shots I took in Manhattan Beach, CA using my old tripod..

Self portrait

After a long time I am writing a blog so feeling like a stranger on my own blog :) ...Today morning while I was going through my LinkedIn profile I thought I should have my profile picture here..... however, I have been always thinking about it but never gave a serious thought. First of all I am shy to publish my photo on the web and second, I always wanted to take a self portrait for which I never took special efforts. Now being alone at home and having plenty of time in hand it was perfect opportunity to take a self portrait to have a profile photo.

So here is the photo.....to be honest I am pleased with the result.....the reason is .....taking a self photo is not at all easy, more over I have added 2 external flashes in the setting which made it more difficult to take photo and check the results after every shot. After almost 85 shots this one came near to my expectation.....now I am proud owner of my profile picture

f5.6 @50 mm
ISO 200
Key light (left) : power 1/4 @ 4 ft with 60 inc umbrella
Fill light (right) : power 1/16 bare flash without modifier
Post production: added little contrast and vignetting in PS camera RAW

Being Cloned .....

Mirrors are always mysterious so I thought of using it for making this multiplicity self portrait. Composition was not as simpler as I thought earlier. Because of the tight space in the bath room I had limited options to position myself, I tried various set ups and I think this one come much subtle.

I used 2 Vivitar flash one at the bathroom door pointing to me from backside and other at left hand side pointing upwards to get bouncing light from ceiling. Its cool being cloned !

Cool Bokeh video creativity !

This is one of the coolest creative videos I came across, I am impressed and certainly would like to give it a shot  one day....I am happy that I got a new inspiration to work on :)

Sugar please !

Last week I tried to recreate a shot that I saw on one of the website. With the use of 2 external flashes and a white board reflector I could able to get the below shot, however not totally satisfied.

Aperture f16, shutter 1/250th, 1st flash 1/8th power hand held about 3 ft away from the cup, 2nd flash 1/16th power  to the left pointing to white board from the bottom.

The 2nd flash was intended to highlight the sugar, but I am not satisfied with the result as I was expecting the sugar to be more sparkled than it really came out......I would give more try to get the shot I am expecting.

Moment and Motion !

In the search of something new, this week I came across something called Cinemagraphs. This is a technic which allows motion in the captured moment, which is a pretty cool idea. I gave a shot to create my own cinemagraph.....its so nice to have the Moment with Motions.

Here is the link which I referred to create cinemagraph.

Update 07/23/2012: I have found this cinemagraph tutorial which is more simpler to understand hope this will help you to create your own.
http://www.labnol.org/software/cinemagraph-tutorial/19453/



My daughter Urvi was watching her favorite animated tv show Wonder Pets on nick Jr.