Unattainable...

As of last week San and me have been together 11 years. A very short time compared to my parents (39) or my grandparents (73 years when grandpa passed away), but long enough for us to understand a postponing of the celebration because work.. work.. work.. came in the way.

Just like Indian festivals, birthdays, etc. etc. being pushed to the nearest weekend, the wedding anniversary plan was to go to Livermore Temple and say a prayer with the kids and San's parents.

We knew there was a Kumbhabishekham going on at the temple and we expected the crowd. It was a good walk to park and finally when we washed our feet and went to the entrance, the god's appointed bouncers asked us:

"are you kalasA sponsors?"

Me : No.

GAB : Sorry Sir. Today the temple entrance is for kalasA sponsors only. If you are a sponsor you can take the kalasA and go inside and come out.

Me : !!!!!?????!!!! We have come from south bay and my father in law is here only for three weeks. Can we go in and come out real quick?

GAB : very sorry sir. they are making arrangements for the puja tomorrow. regular devotees have to come back tomorrow.

So now we were "regular devotees". It did bother me a bit and got to thinking of how this blog got started and how the blogger mellowed out over time.

We drove all the way from Cupertino to Livermore and back without as much as going into the temple. This was a first with this temple.

They could have mentioned the prominently in the website or the folks who were regulating the traffic outside the temple could have asked us the same question and could have turned us around. Would have at least saved an hour, changed plans and driven my in-laws to some other place to celebrate. The Ghirardeli chocolate factory was actually our other(usual) choice.

God is in chocolate! God is in Vanilla! He is in every flavor is what we have always been saying.

Next year, the ritual changes. We celebrate at our usual favorite spots. The GG Bridge and some great ice cream.

Balaji Ummachi, why do you make me have this love hate relationship with you? Why?

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High Key - trial Photoblog

Visthra had posted a facebook linkpointing to another site with some tips for high key photography.

This weekend started off very differently with both in-laws being out of the house and just the four of us starting off a lazy weekend. The nose was acting up and that meant no outdoor stuff. Perfect day to find the right bright window and play with the kids, right?

Wrong.. as it turns out, the models should help by not moving or this thing does not give you good results.

Finally what worked?

Crank ISO all the way to 1600, go 1/60 to 1/200(for the moving models we raise in this house), and go as open as the aperture would allow me with the 18-200mm at 150-200mm. No flash (but used two foam sheets to reflect light back on to the kids..

The other option was to use the 50mm and go f1.8 with the ISO still at 1600 and 1/250 seconds.

Expose for the subject, don't worry about the background. Let it flood the shot. That pretty much summarizes the "high key" concept. Can totally see why a bounce flash would be useful in this case.

Here are the first trial results. They will be perfected over time..

Thanks to Visithra and Louis Pang for making an otherwise ordinary Saturday morning, exciting!

ps. on a side note.. ain't manual mode great? If you took a picture of the kids in automatic mode in the same location with the same setup, this is what you will get! There is more to photography than having a good or great camera. It is all the little tricks and the experience you build with constant experimentation, learning from failures and improving on successful shots that makes a difference.

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10 years flies by

On our tenth wedding anniversary, we did what we do best. Did the SFO tour for visiting relatives.

The golden gate may not rank in the top 5 romantic spots in the world, but it sure ranks in the top 5 for us! Most notably the most romantic spots in our life being

1. our bedroom
2. our bedroom
3. our bedroom
4. our bedroom
5. golden gate bridge vista point

This was our umpteenthuncountableth visit to the vista point over the last ten years and we still had a blast in spite of the cold winds and chilly weather.

We also had a nice dinner at one of our local favorites, the Chaat house and followed it up with some dessert at out other favorite place (the reason we went to San Francisco in the first place!), Ghirardeli Square.

The ice cream as usual, was excellent.

So are the moments and memories!

This week will not see that many posts as we are going to celebrate the anniversary over a whole week with relatives and friends!

Once again, thanks to our parents who by logic or fluke got us together and more importantly to all powers unknown to us that played a part in this partnership!

As for the next ten years, we say "Bring it on!"

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A busy fortnight

Our hands were tied (or dyed rather) for the last two weeks...

First an apology to all readers who read this blog.

Had to go to India on a 11 day trip to attend the BIL's wedding.

We had a ton of fun! The short and hectic trip (which was spent in Chennai except for a one day trip to the village in Anandathandavapuram) with two little kids was interesting and tiring to say the least.

Our house here in the US was being worked on and we did not want to publicise our going away to the world. My brothers place in Chennai was being worked on as well and they had moved to our old home.

It was nice for 6 adults and 3 kids to stay in a two bedroom flat and it got back so many memories from thirty years ago when we were little kids and we had three-four generations of folks in two or three rooms. There was no landline or internet though and that made it impossible to post anything.

The whole trip got back a flood of memories. There is something to be said about staying in the same room where you had the proverbial "first night" after marriage, except you have two kids lying between you and your wife and the entire room smells of DEET! Rest assured there will be a ton of posts in the next two weeks.

The wedding was awesome and we now have a new addition to the extended family and the new Mami has been given an A+ grade by Jr. and the little one!

We now have a new perspective on Chennai, India, Weddings, traffic, travel, life in general!

Cannot wait to write about it.

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Trailers, websites and south Indian weddings

Over the last few years, have you noticed how every movie that is releasing, has a website and some kind of yahoo or gmail address?

Today the BIL sent a copy of his wedding invitation and what surprised me the most?

There was an official wedding email address on the invitation!!!

The world has come a long long way, from the days where the wedding invitation would say GRAMS : PANDIYA or some such identifier for people to send their wishes through a TELEGRAM, directly to the wedding hall! Even as late as ten years ago, our wedding invitation had such a GRAMS thing!

Today it is www.thesimpsonsmovie.com or thesimpsonsmovie@gmail.com for a movie, and

sundarwedssangeetha@gmail.com !! for a wedding invitation!

Going to suggest to the BIL that he and the would be start a website along similar lines for their wedding and leave it kind of open source for people to post pictures, comments, etc. etc..

Come to think of it, there are actually some nice applications to such a website. All random junta who take cell phone photos and videos at the wedding during the "thaali tying" ceremony can post their videos and photos into this site!

In case the official videographers are all over the place shining their bright handheld lights on the bride, brides dad, groom and surrounding relatives, then screw up, and don't get the 30 seconds of action right, some random audience cell phone or relatives handheld camcorder might have done a better job!

Have you ever wondered why in the odd photo, where you can clearly see the grooms face as he is tying the knot, he has a painful expression on his face? It has nothing to do with the woman he is marrying or marriage. It is literally a look of pain! Chances are the hair on his bare back have started burning thanks to the powerful filament bulb the lightboy is shining, a little too close for the grooms comfort!

We have seen our own wedding video, ONCE! We were shrunk into a small circle covering approximately 1/9th of the screen in an inset, during the 30 critical seconds, and the background of the video suddenly showed the temple towers of Thirupathi and the soundtrack switched from the priest uttering "maaangalyam ...." to "rakkamaaaaa kayya thattu"..

I kid you not. Obviously a lot of bluescreen work and video editing technology, went into that masterpiece. One possible explanation for this is my re-creation of what must have possibly conversed between the video dude (abbreviated to VD in this post! yeah.. that was intended.. I have not forgiven him yet!) and my dad, prior to the wedding:

Dad : Nalla video eduppia pa? (will you take a good video?)

VD : Dont worry Saar. Asaththiduvom ! (we will excel!)

Dad : Mootha payyanoda ore kalyaanam pa.. . (my eldest sons only wedding...) Make sure the video quality is good.

VD : Saar, Sridevi Kalyanaththukku naan dhan saar Stills potten! (I did the stills for actress Sridevi's wedding)

Dad : Enna pa.. wedding photova still'nu sollare!

VD : Film industryla neriya velai panni irukken sir. ( I have a lot of experience in the film industry). That is why I use the terms interchangeably.

Dad : Okay! (possibly launched into his "what is in it for you..." pitch). Will give you the contract for the wedding video. Do a good job and I will recommend you to all the people I know. There are going to be over a 1000 people at the wedding. Lots of eyes on you and your team.

Your work should speak for itself. If people see the good work you do, more people will ask for your business card.. by the way, why don't you give me a few of your cards, so I can recommend you in advance to some other friends whose kids are getting married.

VD : (possible big grin.. I am imagining this of course)Yes Sir. Definitely Saar. Sure Sir. I will make sure the video speaks for itself..

And thus spake VD's Video! The guy thought our wedding video was going to be his resume!

So he pretty much exhausted every menu option on his WedVidSoft Ver. 2.0, within a 90 minute video clip!

First he zooms in on San's face, then by magic, she splits into two, then four, then eight, then sixteen and eventually when we have 65536 San's at a pixel level, and two things start to happen..

a. The eighth graders in the wedding hall watching this feed on the TV monitors on the other end of the reception hall went "Now, that is what the math teacher was trying to tell us about last week in Geometric Progression.. If only I had seen this video yesterday, I could have aced that math test!".

b. The amoeba in the coffee and cooler spills on the floor next to us are going "What the heck!!! No one multiplies faster than us.. NO ONE! These two aren't even married yet and look at them divide on the screen.. God! What will happen after they are married? No one will use as an example of reproductive prowess, in biology textbooks!"

That is when the video goes "cut.. cut.. cut.." and I start to replicate myself on the screen while a frozen San watches.

We zoom in from the left, right, top, bottom, fade into each other, we have vertical and horizontal blinds that come and go only to reveal me change to her and her change to me as the blinds shift, we spiral into the screen as though we are already dizzy after a few hours of marriage, and the list goes on. In short it is an endless fun of various moviemaker options for 10 mintues straight. By this time anyone watching the video (other than us) will be in splits, laughing.

This is followed by me zooming into a freeze frame on an oval shaped inset as I watch San smile and do all kinds of video tricks, which is promptly followed by San looking down on me (yeah, it started right there) as I do cheap tricks that include but are not limited to, me looking circular, elliptical as well as linearly polarized, having a star filter around me, a central me with five mini me's orbiting around the central me(all with star light patterns), etc. You get the picture by now?

All this within the wedding reception! The actual wedding part is of course a combination of "Innerspace", "Star Wars" and "The Blair Witch project".

The camera zooms into the mouth of the yawning guests, clearly revealing the lunch menu on the big screen, so others can be motivated to get in line for the next "pandhi". This is followed by the camera doing a rolling move alongside the dining table with the food served and ready. For some strange reason, the cameras lateral movement close to the table reminds you of the title captions on the Star Wars movie!

The rest of the video can easily put "the blair witch project" to shame. Maybe they got the idea for that movie only after seeing bootleg copies of our wedding video, err, our videographers resume!

Now where was I? Wedding websites, in case the videographer screws up....

A post that started as an altruistic freelance advice to the BIL and his would be, ends up becoming a description of our wedding video. Tsk, Tsk! Deep are the wounds from the one time viewing of that fateful VCD!

It is now time to let the BIL and BILie, write their own video saga!

ps. I will be there with my own camera phone, camera, camcorder, etc. etc. to witness the event, just in case the....

pps. My dear BIL, not to worry. The material scientist in me is going to bring a flame retardant spary for your back, to protect you from filament lamps, as you tie the knot! I got you covered.