How to add copyright symbol & name to Photos in Picasa3

Very simple....
*Select a picture
*Then select 'Add/Edit the Photo' option from the toolbar on the left
*It basically gives you the option to write something over the picture
*Now comes the main part - Press & Hold Alt key and enter the number '0169' and let go of the Alt Key. Picasa will add Copyright symbol to that picture.

Thats it. Have fun copyrighting your pictures.

Indian maternity portraits - Tips

I guess u mught have understood the title well. Many of you Indian Pregnant women, (like me) must be wondering how to take and preserve good maternity pictures. I kind of never liked exposing my belly or bare body of pregnant women in the photographs and preserving them.... Well its my personal taste. May be becoz the way i was brought up.This is so common here in UnitedStates or any other western countries. Believe me its becoming very popular in India too... But im sure, there are lots of people who still stick to my kind of taste.

Been thinking about this topic - 'Photography for Indian Pregnant Women' long since. Ok, so this post will be more useful for those of you Indian preggo ladies,  who resides outside India, and just have digital camera, ans still wanna preserve ur consolidated maternity memories, but do not have enough ideas to capture your thoughts.I Came up with some consolidation of ideas by browsing and viewing lots of albums, I hope you will be a starter inspiration for you all just like me.

There are several ways you can consolidate your maternity memories

1. Traditional
2. Contemporary
3. Mixture of both

Things you will need:

1. A good digital camera (Though a DSLR will be ideal)
2. An account with the digital photo developing sites like Snapfish/ Kodakgallery/Shutterfly/Clark etc etc
3. And a perfect mood! Have a natural smile in all ur pictures.Or atleast donot be a frowny.

Tips/Ideas

• You take pictures showing each month or by trimester.
• When you take pictures month by month , it is better to stand in the same place , prefferable against a plain wall , posing sideways, with some plain ( no patterns), and dark colored dress, throughout the pregnancy.That way u can see ur belly's growth.
• When you have no time for all these, then u might wanna take random pictures but remember to note the trimester. May be u can show up ur fingers as to what month you were , in that picture at that time.
• When taking random pictures:

Place: Outdoor photographs, in the daylight, are always my first choice. Prefferable greenery background. Like you can go to a nursery, or a playground, sidewalks with the green bushes, or even ur own garden for that matter.
Costume: You can either choose our traditional indian outfits like Saree or Salwar or even a mix like brightblue jean with white kurta or the wester outfits.
Costume Color: Denim blue Jeans and Whites for all skin type.
                            Dark red/Bright yellow/Dark Green for fair skin.
                            Mustard color/white/ neutral shades for dark skin.
 Make-up : Minimal. Just enhance your eyes with clear mascara, and lip gloss. Ofcourse with neatly tweazed eyebrows. Let your hair loose.

Place: Indoor Photographs with bright good light - will be my second choice.
Costume : Same. Denimblue and whites will be perfect for any occasion.
Color : Same
Make-up: Same as above.

Poses:

• Outdoor : Just a casual pose while walking in the breeze.
• Outdoor: Or by sitting or lying down over a green lawn , you seeing the blue sky....
• Outdoor : Just holding hands with your husband (either front or back pose), using self timer.
• Indoor: Lying in a couch with legs crossed and with some pros like reading books -picture to be take from behind your head, so that your face is not visible , only your tummy is visible.
• Indoor: Sitting in a yoga mat with some yoga postures.
• Indoor: If you already have a kid(s), then you can hold their hands or legs, and pose sideways.
• Indoor/Outdoor: If you already have a kid(s), then you can take the usual pose, by making them hug around ur belly and pose sideways.
• Indoor/Outdoor: Holding flowers close to belly and posing sideways. This should be a closeup shot of ur belly with ur hands holding flowers
• Indoor/Outdoor:A very common pose - again a close up shot  of ur belly with your hands making a heart symbol.
• Indoor/Outdoor: To have an indian touch you can pu mehandi in ur hands and wear beautiful gorgeous bangles.
• Indoor/Outdoor: Or you can take pictures when u hang out with ur friends or relatives.

Add up ur professional baby shower pictures to this collection and make a photobook! I personally love photobooks rather than storing the induvidual prints. Im sure many of you will think , it would have been better if i demonstrated with some pictorial examples. I will definitely comeup with my  own compilation examples asap. Till then have fun taking & preserving photographs.

My favourite clicks part - 3

1. St.Paul's Cathedral Church - London : I just love the curve of the architecture around the church in this picture.

2.Masala Zone : A restaurant in London that had a different interior which interested me to click this shot.

3.Sri Venkateshwara Temple Birmingham :

4.Valentine's Cake 2010:

5. Big Ben : Namma ooru style-la sollanumnaa - 'Manikoondu'ngo!

Big Ben - London, originally uploaded by abigeeth.

London Sight Seeing

Second day of sightseeing london, was quite hectic. Especially with a toddler , bags, stroller, and camera. Yet, tried to click few pictures.

I covered most of the important places. Although couldnt get into each on of them which will be more time consuming.

A brief comment on the places that i went :

• Tower of London : One of my favourite place in the list. An illustrated history and description of this World Heritage Site with the guards. Quite interesting and at times disgusting to hear about the murders that they committed those days. The most interesting and important place for all the tourist is the crown of jewels . What exactly are the Crown Jewels? Basically all the gold and glitter used in coronations: ten crowns are on display, plus scepters, jewelled swords, and the Orb . The most important thing to see here (especially if you are an indian ) is the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond in one of the queen's crown. I am plannign to post a seperate article on the crown of jewels.
• Cruise on River Thames : full range of sights along the Thames, with commentary (sometimes humorous): Houses of Parliament, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, the Eye... Highly recommended, for London Sightseeing!
• Big ben : is actually the local name for the bell in the Clock Tower.one of london's best-known landmarks, and looks most spectacular at night when the clock faces are illuminated. You even know when parliament is in session, because a light shines above the clock face.
• The Houses of Parliament, otherwise known as The Palace of Westminster, stands next to the BigBen. It is a royal palace and former residence of kings. The layout of the Palace is intricate, with its existing buildings containing nearly 1,200 rooms, 100 staircases and well over 3 kilometres (2 miles) of passages. Among the original historic buildings is Westminster Hall, used nowadays for major public ceremonial events.
• London Eye : Didnt getinto the capsule. Just clicked few wonderful shots of it.
• The Royal Courts of Justice : was opened by Queen Victoria in 1882 and became the permanent home of the Supreme Court.

To be continued .............

London

So the day of surprise finally arrived. Me, my husband & our son all three landed and took some rest and by the time we could get over the jet lag , our son got sick with high temperature and cold due to the severe wheather conditions prevailing here. It is much cold and windy than NJ.

The pictures above were the places that are located exactly within 5 minutes walk (except one or two)from the hotel where we stayed. For now i guess this is wat it is.

London is made up of very attractive architecture, and each one of them is unique. Looks like many of the main building like St.Pauls cathedral church has even survived bombs from wars. All of them are dated atleast a 2 or more centuries many of them are dated back a thousands of years back, which is a jaw-dropping and interesting fact!

To be Continued ................






Photographs by Abi.

Nature at our door step!

Please click the image to view it larger.

It was a rainy day today and very cloudy. A little cold outside , so i had to close the window which i usually open just for some ventilation. And there i found this beautiful deer outside our house, not just one, they were 3 of them. Immediately i rushed in search of my poor little digital camera all over my house and finally found it very near by myself :))

Tried to click few shots, as clear as i could. Since it was late evening and was getting slightly dark i changed my camera's settings to get the pics clear. I couldnt get out because im sure their ears are very sensitive and that they might run away. So i took those pics from my window , which is why you would see the glare in some pictures.

Hope you all like it.

Vaccation to Ocean City, Marryland.

We took a mini-vacation to Ocean City, Maryland and it was great. We had a fab time. Couple of days during end of summer, in Ocean City was hot, sunny, happy and crowded. Daytime highs in the 80’s, sometimes hitting 90. Nighttime lows 65 to 55 degrees which will little colder.Lots of exuberant children and relaxing parents. The welcome board with the flag at the entrance of the city was really a warm welcome to all the visitors visiting that place which is surrounded by the beautiful blue Atlantic ocean around . This place was busily engaged with ferries , mini boats, fishing activities and a lot more.


It was quite a pleasant scenic beauty to do the boardwalk along the seashore. Which wasn't much crowded . It has lot many shops on the walkway, which was really fun for the collectible freaks like me! At the dawn it was getting a bit colder & beauty of the moon, the ocean, and their reflections...was at its best shot! Wish i had a better camera...:( !!

Okay Arts & Craft Lovers...here you go with quite a few shops at the exhibition which was held in the convention center. Actually there weren't many shops when compared to Indian Exhibitions i have seen so far. But whatever shops that was present there had their best products. Products like quilted napkin covers, pillowcases, throws, books, ready-made dessert mix, gems and jewellery shops were being displayed.

One of the most important thing that you can notice once you are in ocean city would be the number of hotel resorts that are present there. I really doubt if a small town like this would have so many beach resorts. The Coastal highway stretch has more than 100 streets in it and you can see the resorts along the streets throughout the stretch which is interesting huh! And the architecture of all the buildings are really nice and pretty tall.

Now, a fun place for the kids called - "The Jolly Roger".
We our son to Jolly Rogers . On the plus side, there were a number of rides for his age ( 2 yrs) he did not have to wait for any rides. And the staff was reasonably helpful. On the downside, we spent more than $35 for the rides .

Note to parents with small children, watch out for the "point system". If you buy points, the each ride costs between $2 and $3.50 for a small child's ride. If your child plans to ride more than 5 rides, you are probably better off with the multi-park pass than the point system. The rides are carnival quality. While I felt ripped off by the point system, it was our fault for not doing the math and going with a pass.

It was as perfect a beach day with a perfect weather. Ocean City, Maryland, is filled to the brim with visitors. It’s the kind of classic, late-summer day that makes people love Ocean City. It inspired me to celebrate by posting a few photos of classic Ocean City.

See you all soon :))

Ganesh Chathurthi - 2009

Our Ganesh Chathurthi this year happened to be as simple as it could be as compared to the last year's celebration. We had been travelling a lot around the town . So coudlnt do much this time. But i am immensely satisfied with the fact that i did my own Ganesh Idol using the natural clay. Thanks to the companies that produces such a wonderful product which are so easy to play with and it really makes our life easy when compared to the real clay that we traditionally use. to make the idol. Anyways , hope u all enjoy the pictures .

Vaccation 2008

My vaccation last year was great except the fact that we all fell sick (flu). Other than that it was a nice trip. we had been to LA & Lasvegas and most of the picture i clicked was at lasvegas. So pls find the picture below and let me know ur valuable comments. Took all the pics with my ordinary compact digita camera - canon.

Disneyland Castle dec 2008:

Disney Parade :

Disney Parade :

Bellagio Chihuli glass at the lobby :

City view from our room @ bellagio:

My favourite clicks - Part 2

These photographs were shot about 5 yrs ago. It was taken from my old digital camera .Happen to find these pictures while i was browsing my album. Thought i would post few of them.


1. Long shot - Lake George , NY.

2. I just fell in love with this lovely bike with a bull's horn at the bottom of the handle bar.
(Lake George NY - 2004):

Ganesh Chathurthi at our house:

This is a private residence for Dr. Emlen Physick and his family built on 1879. The 18-room mansion is now Cape May's only Victorian house museum and is administered by the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts. Entertaining and educational guided tours of the Estate run year-round.
Took this picture from our garden , a beautiful Old-garden-rose plant on 2006:

And tried to make a garland out of the flowers that we got from the plant:

Fall 2008

Official fall started today . Its getitng cold here. So the usual guest (FLU) would make its frequent trip to all of our houses here. Been really sick , especially my 1 yr old gets cold, once in a fortnight. On top of all these things one cannot deny the splendorous beauty of the fall. I still remember my first fall color at New Hampshire, i was wide eyed & wonder stuck because for its a new experience for a person who comes from Asian countries like India. Although it was biting cold below 20 Deg Farenheit.... I managed to come out and click few pictures. But im sorry i lost those pictures by having them saved in yahoo pictures which had been totally collapsed now. It was really discouraging to me as i had too many pictures in that. All though i moved them all to other photo management website... i kind of lost interest to even check those pictures these days. I find picassa good with lots of storage space. Anyways will shoot some nice pictures and post it later.



Here you go.... the pictures i took yesterday (9/28/08) from our patio. It was too gloomy and rainy for the past 3 days. Looks good on picture but not good on a weekend! :-((

Phtographed by myself.

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String of beauty

Who does not like flowers, especially the fragrance they carry, is unique. I always have a special love for the flowers in my home-town chennai. Different varieties of jasmine (malli), rose (roja), oleander(arali), Chrysanthemums(samanthi) and lot more are piled up in the bazaar and sold as loose flowers by weight or strung as strands and sold length-wise. No matter what, one cannot forget the smell of flowers which will remind us of our memories going to temples,beach,park, theater, or any other places. I have posted few pictures of the flowers and flower bazaar in chennai which reminds me of my past memories.

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My favourite clicks Part-1

I just fell in love with the color of these flowers which i found at Hotel Marriot where we stayed for our vaccation to Hersey's Park,PA.


Hershey's Family:

Mommy & Baby

Took this picture in costco from the flower stall . It was a bunch of orange rose boquet

White Crysanthemum, taken at a farmers market during vaccation:

Empire State building , managed to take this shot, within few seconds, while i was moving in a car in NYC. I was happy that it came out so clear without a shake. Newyork city view taken from weehawken NJ.

Capemay Vacation pics oct 22 2007, a day after the pumpkin festival

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Digi Workshop

I've been taking pictures since i turned 15 if i remember right. I was in my 10th grade. It would be funny if i rewind back those days. I have no idea what photography was all about. But i liked it. When i grew older i developed more interest towards photography and clicked better pictures. My first camera was a yashika , the model back in the 80's, where we have to load the film and get rolling on.Lately i've been playing with the canon digital camera. Most of us, classify ourselves as a beginner thus own a digital camera, but we do not know how to make the most of it. I'm not a professional photographer, but i would call myself a good photographer. You check my works from the archives, which i will post it later. Now, I would like to share some tips on getting good pictures with ordinary digital camera(without SLR) here.
Basics:
1. Avoid shaking: therefore hold your camera with a grip, if possible lean again a solid surface or hold your breath for a while taking pictures. It’s not rocket science but it’s amazing how many people get it wrong and wonder why their images are blurry.

2. Resolution: Always choose the highest resolution , becoz if u happen to shoot a picture of ur lifetime and that u have ur camera's resolution set a low, theres nothing you can do to make it print at a descent size. Rather have the high resol. and reduce the file size before emailing.

3.When to use flash: The flash only works from 6 – 12 feet. Don’t use a flash when shooting scenery or long distance pictures. But DO use the flash when you're shooting people in bright midday sunlight - it fills in the harsh shadows. And, no, it won't overpower the sunlight.

4. Focus: Hold the button HALF WAY DOWN to focus on a subject (not the background). If necessary - say, the subject is off center - first compose the entire shot using the zoom, then point the center spot at the subject, press the button halfway down (this locks the focusing point!), then re-frame the shot and take the picture!!

5. Distance: try to be as much close as possible to the subject .

6.Some Functions in the digital camera :

You must be wondering how to get a picture with the background dull and the subject to be perfectly clear,we have always got a habit to click pictures with the "Auto" mode.Now here try to use the setting called "portrait" in your digital camera. I've demonstrated 2 pictures with "Auto" mode and then with the "Portrait" mode, pls find the diff and enjoy using it.

Whenever you intend to shoot a tiny objects with your ordinary digital camera, you might again get it blurry if your camera is in "Auto" mode. Switch the setting to " Macro" mode and try focusing the small objects. Pls find the pics below with auto & macro mode and see the difference it makes.("macro" option will always carry a flower symbol.)


Hope you like it. Enjoy taking pictures.

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