Brucified - Springsteen @ Dublin 08

Bruce Springsteen, Dublin, RDS, 23.5.08, originally uploaded by scooter.john.

Last weekend, I went to see Bruce Springsteen "Boss", start of the european tour, at RDA Arena in Dublin. We had pitch tickets and were quite close to the stage. And it was one of the best concert I saw, brilliant, songs, music, energy, the band, bruce himself, the whole arena was filled with energy as long as he played.

Some more shots from the show:

The beginning - This particular camera shot was amazing, sun set on background and the boss shadow

he was totally enjoyin the crowd, as u can see :)

great great music, energy

end, but not really, they played loads of songs until drop tried, the band "e street band" were amazing

one of the final songs, so much energy at his age, damn.. we were just tired of jumping :)

Barca - Dump

Barcelona Flickr Dump

Myself - Did I?

I think I have never posted a picture of mine (just myself) on this blog. Time for a change. Here is it, my new look,

not really, its not. Proof of how windy Ireland can be. While we were on the west coast, we went for a walk along the cliffs in evening and it was quite windy and when we arrived back, a friend of mine took this shot and we were totally going nuts /laughing about how crazy I look in it :), I like craziness :D

So, do i look crazy enough :D?

I Like These Dump

I Like These set from my flickr sets

Eye on Dublin Dump

Some of the Dublin shots from last few months.

Hydrogen Atom - Laws of Physics - Next Chapter

Sometimes I miss not continuing on studying Physics (if you don't know, I did my BS in Physics), the derivation of equations, how science helps us in explaining the phenomena's going around us, doing experiments. Anyway, thats not the matter of discussion, I was watching TED again, and saw two very interesting n compelling talks on CERN Hydrogen Collider and String theory.
The first one is by "Rock Star Physicists" (thats how TED introduced) Brian Cox and how LHC at CERN will help us write the next chapter.


This one is by Brian Green (minuscule strands of energy vibrating in 11 dimensions) and has some very interesting visualization for understanding.

First HDR

Following on my first HDR post last week. I played around with the RAW images I took while on the trip to west coast and clifsfs of moher.

To start off, am using the following softwares:

• Windows Live Photo Gallery - browsing images
  
• PhotomatixPro 3.0 - for generating HDR images from single RAW files and for tone mapping (the most imp. step for HDR processing). And mentioned in various tutorials I read, it does a much better job than Photoshop, so if you wanna do HDR, go for PhotomatixPro
• Photoshop CS2 - for some final cleanups, adjustments. If you generate HDR from different exposures shots, you can do much more stuff in photoshop layering 3/4 different versions of the shot and combining with tone mapped version. As I was using single RAW file, i only did few minor adjustments for filtering etc.

Ok, so here are the original 2 images first (not exactly same, but similar):

Final, HDR processed images:

I like the second one better, the cliffs of moher one. The first seems very blue with clear blue sky and blue water. I didn pretty similar processing on both images. I followed this tutorial on youTube.

One thing, its an evolving exp.; the more you do it, the more you learn and get better in finding the right tone, texture for the HDR.

What do you think, do the images looks any good?

--

Some people think, its not true HDR becoz of single exposure RAW file and its just tone-mapping. Anyway just mentioning.

Sea Weed

Guess Who's Hand?, originally uploaded by Mohan S.

off-course now thats my hand in the foreground holding a sea weed (weed..*:~*) with irish flag in the background, flying high. I like it!

Does it look like a shot for FIAT ad?

2008-05-03 West Coast 1 041, originally uploaded by Mohan S.

hehe, just wondering. I think so it does :D

the grey-white house background with windows and a car turning in front :D

Eat Better

Interesting TED talk about "What's wrong with what we eat". Its not about vegetarianism, vegan, meat eaters, etc etc, but its about what we are eating & how we are putting entire planet at risk and how we can have better diet by improving our food - "The Real Food". 

Eat Better. We have to choose now!

Nikon RAW & Photoshop CS2 Problems

So last time, I posted about HDR and that I wanted to try it on some pictures of mine. And during my recent trip to the West Coast, I took some RAW pictures.

I own a Nikon D40 DSLR and am using Photoshop CS2. But there seems to be some issues with the plugins used in Photoshop CS2 not being able to read the NEF (Nikon's RAW file format).

There is lot of discussion on forums n on flickr about it and after searching in the forums here is the simplest solution (there are all sort of issues being raised in forums about it, uninstalling nikon softwares, re-installing CS2, for some it just works, for some it doesn't etc etc)

The problem lies in the Camera Raw plugin for Photoshop. But the currently avaliable version of Camera Raw i.e. 4.4.1 (supoprts D40) but doesn't support Photoshop CS2, min. requirement is Photoshop CS3. Great, its not that I am using version 6 or 7 of Photoshop, I have CS2, what now. I tried looking for older version of it, again surprisingly Adobe doesn't have any link on current version page to older versions.

Version 3.7 of Camera RAW is right version for Photoshop CS2. But after trying numerous times, I couldn't download the file from Adobe website, the link just doesn't work. Bit shite on Adobe part that it so complicated for such known problem and finding the correct version of Camera RAW. Everyone doesn't have the latest CS3 and why, no backward compatibilty.

Finally, I found version 3.7 here. Download the one for CS2. After downloading the file, go to

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Plug-Ins\CS2

and replace the older version of Camera Raw plugin with the 3.7 version you just downloaded (oh if the link above doesn't work, send me a message n I'll email the right version to you). Back up the version before replacing it with new one, just in case it doesn't work.

And finally, Photoshop is able to read the NEF files, so I'll post some HDR processed shots over the weekend. 

Why can't we make softwares which just work, didn't expected that from Photoshop (thou mebbe its just novices like myself, who get stuck with it).

I had to - Mr. Bean

As long as we are on topic of Punjabi Music (made famous mostly by UK Asian culture). This was hilarious.. Mr. Bean doing his moves on a Punjabi music :). Thou' am not sure if he actually did it but the music fits so perfectly on his moves.

Surprisingly Super Entertaining

Normally, am not big fan of reality shows and probably who is.. most of the time they are shite. But there is tiny bit something good about such shows also which help giving talented people a platform to perform. One such show is Britain Got Talent n I saw few episodes of "Britain Got Talent" last year and it was quite good (esp. the winner). Thou' in the end, when everyone is just singing (is singing the only talent left??) to win, it was sorta not what I liked about show but anyway its a good show. This year, it started nice, I saw this act n its the best, very enjoyable :) and it has quite a few things I enjoy n like .. Indian or Asian (UK asian cultural) Touch, Dancing, Michael Jackson, n Punjabi Music (remember Punjabi MC). Look at the crowd going crazy .. Enjoy..

To The South

Last weekend, after coming back from the west, next day we decided to head little bit south of Dublin, town called Bray Head, for a day hike. One doesn't get nice sunny weather out here everyday, so gotta make use of it as much as possible. So we hop-on onto the train (half an hour from city center). And as we started to get close, cudn't see the sea anymore or the sun and was getting more n more foggy n misty. We started walking towards the beach n broadway walk and it was almost freezing :) n misty. It looked like this:


So we decided to have some warmth by drinking coffee and by then we started see a bit of sun over the hill but it was still heavily misty n foggy like 50-100 mts over us.


Still unsure, we decided to have a walk up the hill and see how it looks. And that was best of best decisions :) .. it started to get clear, sunny, warm, less windy.. almost like we went to different place


Now we were over the misty n foggy weather alongwith the sun :D (gotta say this again.. we don't get so much sun out here). And it was one of most scenic n surreal moments, was just amazing - the view, weather.


And we spent almost 3/4 hours hiking all over the hill (almost to next town - Greystones). Amazing how weather plays.


People enjoyin the sun over the Bray Head.

My fav. shot of the day:


And oh thats Bray Head Hill, n as you can see, its not that high and difference of weather was almost unbelievable.. one of best days in Ireland :)

To The West

Over the bank holiday weekend, we decided to head to the west coast of Ireland. After a few plan changes, we decided to head to Galway first (major city on the west coast) and then decide which route to take. Thou' we never actually we made it to Galway City in itself. Here is the route we end we took during the trip.

While half an hour into the drive, we got stuck in traffic and decided to take small country roads than the big motorways and one of the best decisions also :), first no traffic, tiny country gravel roads, cows, sheeps, bins, horses .. great ride as we headed to the west coast with even more beautiful sunny weather (only if it cud be sunny always) and our first stop some tiny castle along the way. And we decided to head to the Cliffs of Moher (more here) or as everyone says "Cliffs of Mohan", I had to mention it :). It got very windy by the time we reached there and as we walked along the cliffs and a bit rainy also but it was very awesome. One of the best, n breathtaking. Some shots:

And we decided to spent the night at a small village "Doolin" near the footsteps of the clips and had a leisurely walk during evening to the cliffs. Doolin - aas very relaxing and the slow pace of life, friendly locals, live music. We took an early morning drive to the cliffs again. It was nice n warm at 7 AM, we were lucky to have such good sunny weather.



We headed to the very west of Ireland, town called Clifden, bypassing Galway city, driving all the scenic coast, limestone hills, small villages, narrow roads with 100 km/h speed limit (not really, we could only do 50 max on those roads, very surprising). It was just great. The weather was once again on our side, bright, warm, sunny. A local in Clifden told us to go up north side, its called the "Sky Road" and it was probably one of the best spots I have visited.



We started driving towards "Westport", city on the upper west side. And while driving there, we came across this spot "small beach n hills on both sides, nice blue water" (i guess the name was Moorneen or am not sure) but it was so nice, we spent like 4 hours there, just relaxing, sleeping, lunch, walking along the beach, frisbee, and finally some of us dared to go for a swim also. Just thinking of it, wants me to go back there :D .. was gorgeous





Some more (i can keep on going):




We headed to "Westport" through the Connemara National Park. I let the pictures talk -





At westport, pics talk again -




It was my first time to west, and i really enjoyed it and need to go there more often. If you visit me, we def. need to do a drive down west or south or north. Its Ireland at its best.

Marc Ecko Google Homepage

Thats my new google homepage, its nice new feature of iGoogle homepage and every-time I open iGoogle, I like the new welcome page and its design and the best part is that it changes every-time I login. Its the new feature released by google last week and it lets you add new designs by some of the world most famous artists n designers n etc. I have the Marc Ecko template.

Forced May Day Post

Its still April 30th, 11:26 PM but blogger is already assigning it May 1. So happy "May Day". Do you even say happy with it, not sure, I just wanted say it :). Thou' in Ireland, May Day is on
May 5 or atleast the holiday is on May 5th. I think, its mostly the International Worker's Day or Labour Day, the article on wikipedia is too confusing with all sorts of stuff, religion etc etc. Another reason to post was, starting of this year, I thought I should post more often, atleast in double digits every month. But last 2 months, only had single digit posts. It should improve this month :). More later..

HDR - The Extravagance

The Extravagance, originally uploaded by Stuck in Customs.

I am starting to enjoy HDR photographs more n more, normally I don't like processing of shots to make effects or clean-ups or .. (mebbe thats another reason I never tried harder to learn photoshop :)). But HDR gives an extra angle to the image, feels more real, there's something in those shots which I can't explain but always catches my attention. But sadly, my D40 doesn't have auto-bracketing feature to shoot continuous shots with different exposures. Thou' I can still try with single RAW image. Hopefully I'll post some of my shots in HDR soon, first have to shoot something in RAW.

If you wanna see some more, here are the best HDR shots from Stuck in Customs on flickr.