Oh! The Joys of Childhood!

It was a fun weekend. My daughter loves her new bubble maker - "Infinite Bubbles". So on Sunday evening, we went to the near-by play area.



I wanted to shoot colorful shots of all the reflections. I had my 50mm F1.8 prime attached to the camera as I knew I was not going to shoot wide angle. I wanted to use narrow depth of field to make the bubbles stand out. But pretty soon I realized that it was too difficult to take any good pics of shiny bubbles in it with the windy weather.

It was very sunny and taking pictures of my daugher was also difficult due to high dynamic range. As evening sattled and shadows grew longer, I started getting better shots. Out of 50+ shots that I tried, this one is my favorite.

Focal Length: 50mm
ISO : 100
Aperture: F2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/500s
Mode: Black and White (with red filter)
Editing: Sharpen and Glow with Picasa (Free from Google), Noise reducation with Neat Image (Free Demo)

And, I could see parallels between both of our toys. She was making lots of bubbles effortlessly and enjoying running behind them. And I was taking lots of pictures, trying different settings, checking thr results and trying something new.. almost a child's play compared to what photography enthusiasts had to go through a generation before.

I wonder what her first dSLR would be like !

Yosemite Falls

Been too occupied lately with other stuff, so I've not found enough time to do some post processing of the pics from Yosemite. Here is a quick one using Picasa2 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0. I took this picture while waiting for traffic to move (Yes! Traffic! Even in Yosemite!). When you are on a very short trip with family, you have to grab every opportunity you get :-).

Yosemite Falls, Yosemite National Park, CA

• Increased saturation a little and resized the image with Picasa2
• Sharpened using Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 using Unsharp Mask filter (Amount 120%, radius 0.3 , threshold 0.0)

On a Rainy Evening

If you live in San Francisco Bay area, you might have noticed that gorgeous full rainbow yesterday evening. I rushed out to try a picture of it after I reached home from work. But unfortunatetly It was too faint by then. Disappointed I returned to car and noticed the rain drops all over the windshield. It looked very interesting with the backdrop of sunset colors. So I clicked away...

Canon EOS 20D, F8.0, 1/125 s, ISO800

Canon EOS 20D, F8.0, 1/200 s, ISO800

I wish I had used more depth of field. But it was already at ISO800 at F8.0, and to decrease the aperture even further, I'd have to go to ISO1600. I wanted to keep the shutter speed as high as possible for maximum sharpness while holding the camera in hand.

The Rule of Thirds

In Photography, there is this very famous rule that is preached a lot to the beginners. It's called "The Rule of Thirds".
 
Hmm... What it is this rule about?  Well, in California, The Rule of Thirds means

"Whatever Money you make every month, is divided into Three pieces

• First piece is taken away by the Government
• Second piece is taken away by your landlord or the mortgage company
• And the remaining piece, is shared by you, your spouse and kids."

Just Kidding, :-)

Rule of third is actually about how to position your subject in the picture. Actually it's not even a rule, it's rather a guideline for making reasonably framed pictures.

As there is no "Official Text", here is my version.

"Whenever appropriate, place your subject at one third distance from the edges of your frame."

Take a look at the picture below.

In this picture, the subject - the bikes - is placed in the middle of the frame, little bit off the center. The picture looks OK. Now compare this with the picture below.






The bikes are placed in one corner, centered approximately at one third height from bottom and one third width from right. The picture looks framed better then the first one.
 
Here is another example.









Below is the same scene, framed again with The Rule of Thirds in consideration.







 
Main contrast between the two pictures is the fact that, the first picture puts all the emphasis on the surfer by putting him in the middle, while the second picture puts almost equal emphasis on the surfer as well as his surrounding. It also puts emphasis on the direction of his movement and makes it look like the surfer has just entered the frame from the left side.

Another thing worth note here is that the frame is divided horizontally in almost equal parts by water, land and the background of mountains, making it very symmetric.

It does not make sense to try to use The Rule of Thirds for every picture. However, so far I have found that, in any frame where in addition to the subject, you also want to capture an essential property of the surrounding, the rule of third can be used very naturally to create a balance between the subject and the surrounding. For example, the example above shows the beauty of the lake side as well as includes the surfer in harmony with it.
 
Here are a few more examples. 



At the Pier, San Francisco, California
 


All Terrain Vehicle, Rural India


Waiting for the Spring, Mountain View, California