Another Deep zoom composition. As you can see, the technology is not only useful to show off panoramas but one can shoot images at different resolutions and layer them to bring out more details. Microsoft site does a better job of showing off this technology, but here is my attempt.

I should have carried my tripod to get the best possible sharpnedd but unfortunately I did not. High ISO, hand held shots in extremely low light are not the ideal combination. But Still I like this…

The insets are amazing pieces of art and a dying one at that. My dad managed to find working artists practicing the art-form and commissioned these images. Good collection to have.

Technical Details:
Shot with 35mm f/2.0 and the insets are shot with 105mm f/2.5 AIS lenses. All handheld on a D200.

If you are reading via a rss reader, please visit the site for the deep-zoom content.

Another deepzoom image You can say, I like to make panorama’s.

The trouble with tea estates is that there is too much green wherever you look and it is difficult to see good photo opportunity. Especially when you are walking about with a 35mm lens. So I resorted to looking at wide vistas and given I knew I could stitch images and get a good shot, I decided to go for it and shot numerous sequences to be stitched.

Back to this image, the nice 400-500 ft Rock face look very enticing if you are a rock climber and if there had been an op, I would have tried my hands (and legs) at climbing. But the reality is that climbing this rockface is exclusive to the local Irula Tribes (the natives of Nilgiri mountains). They climb this often to get hold of bee hives and harvest honey. You cannot see beehives in this shot but just to the right were a few nicely developed bee colonies ripe for harvest and the locals climb with improvised creeper / rope ladders.

Technical details for those interested:

• Shot using D200 with 35mm f/2.0 AIS lens.
• Stitched with a really cool panorama stitching tool (hugin).
• 5 images shot from bottom to top.
• Some minor adjustments made with lightroom to match exposure and white-balance. Hugin has options to match exposures when you process the images for stitching, I decided to match them manually when pre-processing though.
• One of the shots turned to be slightly out of focus, you will see when you zoom deep in.
• About 12 MB jpeg file made into a deepzoom object using free deepzoom creation tool from Microsoft.

On a separate note, hugin allows a lot of control on stitching the panorama and though a bit more tedious than using photoshop elements, I prefer the output from hugin.

Enjoy exploring.

If you are reading via a rss reader, please visit the site for the deep-zoom content.

Had a short run out of the country to India for the week. vacations are always good especially when company is good and you get to meet good people. In all a good trip to recharge the batteries.

Have a bunch of nice images to show but will stat with one that I kind of like, it is jubilant and colorful and has little girls dancing. Cant ask for better (apart from a better camera for iPhone).

I am not in the habit of making resolutions. But some goals in life are nice to have to work towards…

I intend to do this by 2010.

to bring emotions back to normal, let me relate this story of another set of entertainers conducting business at the same place and time as the ones in the previous post.

The day was bright as it was hot. if you observe the picture herein, the ground is washed out primarily due to the intemsely bright sunlight. The place in ahobilam, a small town in andhra pradesh. Ahobilam is an important religious place but it does not seem to get the attention or oney as other famous temples in India. The place is unique since the temples are dedicated to narasimha, an embodiment of god in a half beast – half human form. You can read the mythology some day here. The trouble is that the place has numerous temples and they are situated in different, not-so-easily-accessible locations. One can drive to some places but a few require strenuous climbs.

It is known that often the temperatures in the deccan plateau sore above 45 deg C. This day when we reached there was also hot but bearably so. While doing a couple of sorties of the ‘base camp’ (a more traditional temple setup on ground level), I could catch up on photographing some of the people around here. One of them was this old couple singing devotional songs. Though they were not the best of singers, one really has to appreciate their will to work for a living. Along with them was this cute little kid (guess is their grandson) who has joined them in their business today. If one looks closely, he is wearing a framed painting of Narasimha – in the hope of wooing pilgrims passing by.

But in true kiddie fashion, this feller is oblivious to the business he is attracting but is more interested in the sweet guava he is munching on.