When it comes to creating a "build up". . .

After a long time, decided to update the Cooking section of this website. Given that the MIL is back in Seattle, it is time my hands took a ladle or two up. . . 

Wanted to have a nice banner picture for this page and roped in the little one for a trick photo shoot. Explained the concept to her.. "Daddy will look like Shakti except with cooking utensils instead of weapons?" 

She immediately got it. After deciding which things to hold in Daddy's ten hands, we paired up the things and placed 5 sets of utensils on the floor. The camera was set up on the tripod and ready to go. 

The little one had to click, come remove things from my hand, replace them with two other utensils and go back and click... then repeat this three more times! After downloading the photos and doing an initial merge she was disappointed. "I didn't do that good a job appa.. there are some places where you moved!"

Told her that it was not her problem and that she did an outstanding job. It just needed some quality time for Daddy with Photoshop.

1 hour later.. we present to you Daddy in his Vishwaroopam pose in the kitchen..

Never before has a buildup for cooking seen this in the history of cooking or "buildup".

Pretty sure I will be diagnosed as OCD becaue most of the time was spent in getting the shadow right. 

The most important thing in all of this?

The little one is going to be one hell of a photographer and eventual photoshopper. En kula kozhundhu has been identified!

Options Galore!

Another attempt at salvaging a picture..

The original which was over exposed (my mistake for not changing settings after switching lenses)

My first attempt to cover it up by using artistic filters and adjusting the shadows and highlights..

The "Sankara Sastry" in me refusing to accept the "artistic" fix and doing a proper job of layering the image and blending it. .

At this point the image gets incremental improvement for every 10 minutes spent n the picture.

This goes to show the importance of many things..

a. make sure you check your settings everytime you switch lenses from Telephoto to wide angle so that you don't have to photoshop in the first place. 

b. always shoot raw images so you can pull this off in post processing

c. If you have overexposed sky and you cannot take bracketed shots (too much movement like this boat, wave etc. ) create smart object copies and blend images! 

This was worth the effort.. when printing the larger version of this image on an 8x10 it came out pretty good!

Why bother?

Sometimes San asks me why I bother to sit with Photoshop on some pictures..

See the original of this photo here..

Do you see that "Kebab me haddi" in the background? Well, he happened to be a nice guy, but as far as this picture was concerned he was an unwanted artifact. It was freezing out there, what with the glacier on one side and high speed winds on the other side. My subjects were literally 4 feet away and my zoom was at 17mm  to get them and the scenery in the frame. Simply could not get an angle where I could cut out the nice gentleman but my wife and daughter were flashing smiles at me and it would be criminal negligence if I did not click away!

Photoshop comes to the rescue. See the final picture!

Using the texture of the mountain and floating ice on another part of the picture, cleaned him out of the frame. On the one hand, yes! it is photo manipulation but on the one hand, I have something worth putting in our album!

Thank you Adobe for giving me the wisdom to know that we can always change things in "post-production"!