Christmas Lights and Decorations

                                                          Christmas Tree Lights, a photo by hdvegas on Flickr.

Las Vegas Bowl

Went to see Las Vegas Bowl yesterday at Sam Boyd Stadium. This was dad's first experience watching a football game live. We (especially he) had a great time. Shout out to my buddy Nakul who arranged the tickets.

Window of Nostalgia

Window of Nostalgia, a photo by hdvegas on Flickr.

This is a picture of one of the ten screen-windows of the Sidi Saiyyed mosque, built in 1571, located in my hometown Ahmedabad, India. This intricately carved stone screen window depicting intertwined branches of a tree is called “Sidi Saiyyed Ni Jali”. I made this picture during my trip to India last year. The title says the rest…

Serenity

This picture was taken near the Guánica State Forest (Spanish: Bosque Estatal de Guánica) which is a subtropical dry forest located in southwest Puerto Rico island.

Quality is more important than quantity

In this digital world, when the price of the memory cards and hard drives are constantly dropping, everybody, including me, tend to take numerous pictures, which we would not have taken otherwise (especially, when using films). As a matter of fact, this is one of the biggest advantages of digital photography. The other advantages of the digital photography include the ease of reviewing, organizing, managing, editing and sharing pictures. There are so many free software and websites such as Picasa, iPhoto, Flickr, etc. that allow us to do perform these essential steps. However, most people ignore these essential steps and their workflow include - clicking, downloading and sharing. We get emails and links from our friends and family sharing hundreds of pictures of their vacations or the events they participated in. The perennial excuse is: “We did not get time to arrange and select the pictures…” But they expect us to spend time to go through and enjoy bunch of mediocre pictures that we cannot relate to.

Quality is more important than quantity. Following is a quote from the book –  “Visual Poetry A Creative Guide for Making Engaging Digital Photographs by Chris Orwig”:  We [photographers] are good at collecting, too, but sometimes we don’t know how to let go. The best photographers in the world drop images in a fury...It is not enough to take award-winning photographs. We need to know how to find them…to proceed by elimination-to know how to discard, as the gambler says, that is the great technique of selection. 

Recently, I was helping my buddy Jacob edit some of his pictures that he made during his Alaska Trip. Below are couple of examples of “before and after” editing of some of his favorite pictures. It is clear how bit of editing – auto toning, adjusting white balance and playing with some of the readily available tools can make a big difference.

In my opinion…reviewing, ranking (weeding out pictures) and editing pictures should be essential part of any photographer’s workflow.

P.S These pictures were edited in Lightoom

Zoey means Life

It has been almost three months since I last blogged. Most righteous thing to do would be start blogging again by dedicating this blog to my beautiful daughter - Zoey. Spending time with Zoey has allowed me to make some amazing memories and images of my favorite new subject - "Zoey". This video is a compilation of some of my favorite images that I made during the hospital stay when Zoey was born.

P.S. The meaning of name Zoey is Life and the origin of the name is Greek.

Monsoon Sky

Over the past couple of weeks clouds have been hovering over the valley. This has resulted in some spectacular sunrises and sunsets. I was able to make some time last Monday evening and was able to capture this beautiful sunset.

I was able to also make few panoramic pictures of the Las Vegas Strip during sunset. This particular one is made by stitching 5 images in Adobe Photoshop.

Abandoned Car

Abandoned and old cars always make an interesting subject. I was able to make these pictures during a recent trip to St. George, UT. We stayed in an inn located in their historical district - Green Gate Village Historic Inn . The inn had couple of old abandoned cars in their yard. Very interesting place… if you are ever in St. George checkout the inn or even better stay there.

My New Toy – Nikon 50mm f/1.8

Recently, I purchased my first prime lens. After buying this lens I have not got any opportunities to go out and make some pictures. I have been shooting portraits in low light conditions and experimenting with this fast lens. The other day I was able to make some pictures of flower (Gladiola) bloom in my front yard. This picture was taken around sunset…low light conditions but the faster lens helped and the picture is quite sharp.

So far I have been very impressed with the sharpness of the images. In nutshell, if you are looking for a prime lens which is fast and sharp without spending a fortune on it then this lens is the way to go.

Boxing Day at Zion National Park

This photograph is taken at Temple of Sinawava, Zion National Park. For those of you who have visited Zion National Park, this is located at the end of scenic drive at the mouth of Zion Narrows. Over the last couple of years, I have visited the Park around Christmas time. I have really enjoyed the park during this time of the year as it’s not crowded and you feel as if you have the entire park to yourself.

The pictured waterfall is ephemeral and is typically dry around winter months. However, the Virgin River watershed experienced heavy rainfall just before Christmas. In fact, the Park Service had closed and evacuated the Zion National Park couple of days prior to my visit. But this act of Mother Nature had fed water to numerous waterfalls throughout the park (most I have seen during my 10+ trips to Zion NP in last seven years).

It again rained on Boxing Day (the morning I took this picture). The rain and the low hanging clouds gave another dimension to the already spectacular Zion Canyon. When I drove through the Park that morning it looked like the picturesque sceneries from the movie Lord of the Rings.

I had already scouted the place from where I wanted to make this picture. The rain had saturated the color of the rocks along the banks of Virgin River and the sandstone cliffs. Everything was there for me to make a great picture of this incredible scene…except because of the rain it was difficult to keep my lens dry. After several trial and errors…and wiping my lens after each click…I finally got this shot.

I may have spent more than couple of hours making pictures that morning. I was so soaked by the mystic scenery that I never realized that I was actually soaked by the cold December rain. Bad weather = Good pictures. Enough said…

Below are some more snaps from that morning. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Lucas!

For starters, Lucas is my lone client who lets me take his pictures. He has promised me that he will pay me in beers when he grows up. Speaking of growing, today is Lucas' second birthday. Considering he is my first and only client...I have to dedicate this post to him by uploading some of the happy snaps that I have taken over the past couple of years. Happy Birthday Lucas!

School Bus

School Bus

I was in Puerto Rico inspecting some bridges back in March. One day while driving, we encountered a street vendor selling vegetables/fruits in this old beaten down school bus. It was an interesting sight and I could not resist making pictures. So here we go…

Check out the entire set on my Flickr account