Toronto Downtown from CN Tower - Tilt Shift version

Toronto Downtown from CN Tower - Tilt Shift version
Originally uploaded by Tarun Parmar

MIT’s Digital Food Printer Creates Nutritious Meals

Cornucopias’ printing process begins with an array of food canisters filled with the “cook’s” foods of choice. After a meal selection has been made using the device’s multi-touch translucent screen, users are able to see their meal being assembled while simultaneously manipulating real-time parameters, such as calories or carbohydrate content. Each ingredient is then piped into a mixer and then very precisely extruded, allowing for very exact and elaborate combinations of food.
Once each ingredient has been dropped, the food is then heated or cooled by Cornucopia’s chamber or via the heating and cooling tubes located on the printing head. In fact, the ability to hyper-localize heating and create rapid temperature changes also allows for the creation of meals with flavors and textures that would be impossible to replicate with present-day cooking methods 
While we can’t vouch for the final taste, the printer does benefit from a compact shape and provides the user with ultimate control over the origin, quality, and nutritional value of every meal, with no packaging or excess food waste — a prospect which could appeal to locations or organizations struggling with ways to provide adequate and well-balanced meals to their populace.

{Ref: http://www.inhabitat.com/2010/01/20/mits-digital-food-printer-creates-nutritious-meals/}

Clouds passing over Sid's Balcony

Clouds passing over Sid's Balcony
Originally uploaded by Tarun Parmar

The weather was superb today and sparse white clouds passing through the blue sky. I thought of experiment with the Time Lapse and took about 500 shots with 10 - 15 second intervals from Sids balcony. Blended all the shots in Windows Movie Maker with picture duration of 0.125 seconds and transition duration of 0.25 seconds making it a 5 second video. I has plans to take more shot but unfortunately forgot my tripod in Rochester.

If New York were a small planet

Polar Panoramas : 
A panorama captures great width, but a Polar Panorama adds an interesting twist to your photos. I will help you learn how to create these funky-looking panoramas. These are also called "Stereographic Projection", you can learn more about the mathematics about it on Wikipedia. Also, I have sometimes seen people call it "Tiny Planets".

What is Panorama?
Panorama is a hugely wide-angled photo which is created by joining a number of photographs together. This kind of photograph gives you a view which has a span as wide as that seen by the human eye.

What is a Polar Panorama?
A Polar Panorama can make a panoramic view appear to be a separate planet. The “Polar Panorama Effect” is one of my favorite ways to process photos into unique pieces of art. It takes a panoramic (or landscape) photo and uses the Polar Coordinates filter of Photoshop CS or The Gimp to create a circular image that seems to wrap the panorama around a planet.

How do I create Polar Panoramas?
Step 1: Resize and rotate. The first thing you need to do is prepare the image for the Polar filter. You do this by stretching the height of the image so that the image is a perfect square.

Selective Coloring

I find that selective coloring of an image can be useful to highlight a particular item or to suppress a 'messy' background. I also like to use the technique create a black and white photograph with only key elements retaining their color.

Open the image in Photoshop. I've chosen this photo of a tiny flower taken in a Zoo at

Cincinnati. I am trying to show you the before and after of that shot. The one right below is the original.

                                 Before

It's very simple 3 step process.
1st Step:
Click on 'Quick Selection Tool (W)' and select any area of the picture you want to select. Like in above shot I selected the flower in center.

Creative use of Depth of Field (DoF)

Control of depth-of-field is one of the most creative tools photographers and DSLRs have.  
But what exactly is depth-of-field?
In the most basic terms, it's the distance in front of and beyond the subject that appears to be in focus.


Choose your subject—that rose flower in your garden, for example—and focus on it. Depending on what you decide now, you can make the grass in front of that bush sharp or soft; likewise, the fence behind the bush.
Choose to let the foreground and background go soft and you've effectively isolated your subject and called specific attention to it. Choose to have the foreground and background sharp, and the rose bush becomes an element in the overall scene.
The key to using depth-of-field to isolate or blend your subject is lens aperture. Wide apertures, such as f/2.8 or f/3.5, provide shallow depth-of-field: your subject is sharp, but little else is.

Kishika, My Niece

A Tiny Flower

Narrow apertures, like f/16 or f/22, provide a much greater depth-of-field, so that the territory in front of and behind the subject will be in focus. I haven't shot anything like that yet but, I have shot enough landscapes where you want to get everything in focus.

Sunrise at Liberty International Airport, Newark, NJ

 War Memorial at Washington DC

Simply, the smaller the number, the shallower the depth-of-field; the greater the number, the greater the depth-of-field.

Long Exposure Photography

One of the areas of photography that people get wrong is night photography, most people assume that you just use the flash and everything is fine. OK, this is fine for the odd snap shot of your friends or on a night out. But, if you want to get creative and make stunning images at night you’re going to have to do a lot more than just turn the flash on, when you have finished reading this you’ll be able to create images like this:

Toronto Downtown Eastview from CN tower

Space Needle from Kerry Park

 

Toronto Downtown Northview from CN Tower

In this article I am going to show you how to use a technique called Long Exposure. Say good bye to harsh lighting and dark backgrounds. Sort of. This article will show you how to take pictures of night scenes with no moving objects. Night photos of people I will show you later on in another article as that is another kettle of fish.

Firstly, let’s pick a subject. For this article our subject will be a lake. That is easy, it doesn’t get too much more difficult. I promise. Now you have your subject, you’ll need to get your equipment setup. For this article, I’ll use my equipment to show you what is needed.

Space Needle from Kerry Park

Space Needle from Kerry Park
Originally uploaded by Tarun Parmar

Camera Model: Nikon D40
Lens's focal length: 18 - 55 mm
Photo Focal length: 55 mm
Aperture: F 5.6
Exposure time: 8 seconds
ISO: 200


I shot this one from Kerry Park, which is located on the south slope of Queen Ann Hill in Seattle, Washington, located at the corner of 2nd Avenue W. and W. Highland Drive.


The Space Needle is a tower in Seattle, Washington, and is a major
landmark of the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and a symbol of Seattle. Located at the Seattle Center, it was built for the 1962 World's Fair, during which time nearly 20,000 people a day used the elevators, with over 2.3 million visitors in all for the World Fair. The Space Needle is 605 feet (184 m) high at its highest point and 138 feet (42 m) wide at its widest point and weighs 9,550 tons.

When it was completed it was the tallest structure west of the Mississippi River. The tower also has 25 lightning rods on its roof to prevent lightning damage.

Getting serious on Photography

After spending enough of time (about more than a year) with my Nikon D40 dslr, I think I have now got enough collection of good interesting images on Flickr.
I am now thinking about getting serious on these efforts and has put some of the best shots from my collection on Imagekind. I am still learning the pricing options of the site. I think it's kinda too pricy. Will be spending sometime ot go through this and will come up with better value options that one would definitely want to buy the art for.
Do revert back with your opinions. You comments and support is all I need. Thanks. -TP