Inspiration from movies

I wanted to write this blog for long time. I was reading a blog today and it inspired me to write this now, on a Friday evening @6 -) . This blog is just about the inspiration/lessons from movies.

I get inspired from lot of sources like reading great people quotes, seeing people at action (sports, movies, real life), and also I do get inspired from movie dialogues. Earlier I used to think that I am stupid that I am getting inspired from movie dialogues, but later I am convinced that the source of inspiration can be anything as long as it inspires me. There are many dialogues that has inspired me, I wanted to list them all and reflect my opinion on all the dialogues, but to keep this blog simple I will share some of the top dialogues (only) that I always remember.

#1  – Spider Man – Peter Parker: With great power comes great responsibility.

#2 – Batman Begins – Rachel Dawes: Bruce, deep down you may still be that great kid you used to be, but it’s not who you are underneath, it’s what you *do* that defines you.

#3 – Batman Begins – Thomas Wayne: And why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.

#4 – Invictus –

Nelson Mandela: How do you inspire your team to do their best?

Francois Pienaar: By example. I’ve always thought to lead by example, sir.

Nelson Mandela: Well, that is right. That is exactly right. But how do we get them to be better then they think they CAN be? That is very difficult, I find. Inspiration, perhaps. How do we inspire ourselves to greatness when nothing less will do? How do we inspire everyone around us? I sometimes think it is by using the work of others.

Here’s the interesting blog that inspired me today to write this one. This is from socialcast blog.

CLICK on the image to enlarge it.

Depth of Field

Yes, finally I bought the SLR and I hope it keeps my photography interest for at least next few months :-). I didn’t do much research on buying the SLR. I was already biased to Canon, so I bought Canon T1i. Things that attracted me in this model are that it has 1080p HD recording, lens are cheaper than Nikon, and got it in a deal in Amazon :-).

My first experiment with my new camera is to feel the “Depth of field”. Below photos give you a fair idea of what is Depth of Field.

Auto Mode

 

Shallow Depth of Field – Sharp Foreground and blurred background – Aperture Priority (Av) mode, Manual Focus, Av – f/5.6

 

Wider Depth of Field – sharp foreground & background – Aperture Priority (Av) mode, Manual Focus, Av – f/36

 I used below items for this experiment.

 1. Canon T1i with 18-55mm lens

2. Tripod

3. Laptop

4. Paper clips

 I fit the camera to the tripod and adjusted the hight to the height of my table. I used tripod to avoid shake and to capture the same frame with different camera settings so that I can feel the difference of the camera settings. Connected my camera to my laptop for remote controlling the camera. I did this to see how it works :-), and also to avoid any shake in pressing the shutter button.

I set the dial to Auto mode and focussed the objects by moving over the mouse to the shutter button in the EOS utility. Once its focused, clicked the shutter button in the EOS utility. This results in the first photo. You can see that it automatically focused the clip at the far end and blurred the other two clips.

Now, I changed mode to Av and set the Av to F/5.6 and used manual focus to focus the nearest clip. This resulted in the second photo. You can see that the nearest clip is focused and other two clips are blurred. This is called as “Shallow Depth of Field”. This is used to highlight only the object that we focus and blurs the background.

Now, I just changed the Av to F/36 and left every other settings as previous one. This results in the third photo. You can see that the picture is sharp almost till the farthest clip, The Depth of field is wider than previous photo.

I was so excited to see the results and thought for a second that I have become the professional photographer :-), though its a long way to go.

So, if we want to focus only the foreground object and blur the background then we need to set narrow aperture. Whereas if we want both the foreground and background to be sharp then we need to set a wide aperture.

To learn more about Depth of field you can refer to http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm.

My day out on WI-35 state road

Its Saturday 2 PM, I had something planned to do in home but being in the home for all day on weekends somehow makes me feel that I wasted my day. Though I watch movies, youtube videos, chat with friends & update FB :-), I get a feeling that i haven’t done anything interesting on that day. So decided to go out somewhere. I started my car without knowing my final destination. I just hit the state road WI-35 and kept on driving.

Just on my way I decided to go to “Goose Island”, a state park in La crosse, which I heard about, but haven’t been there before. I drove about 7 miles in the state road WI-35 and destination arrived on the right side. I drove around the picnic shelters, campground areas and enjoyed the river & shore. Then I parked my car and walked into the kayak rental, thinking that let me do the kayaking for next 2-3 hours and return home, unfortunately they didn’t rent the kayaks today as water level is more than 6 feet high. What to do next??? Again I started the car without knowing my destination. Once I hit the WI-35 road, I thought of driving further south in WI-35 to see what else is there.

The drive was scenic, Mississippi river is flowing on the right side and bluffs on the left side. Whenever I see the board “Scenic Overlook” I stop the car to see the scenic view. One such view came on my left side. I had to drive over a steep bluff. The view was beautiful.

View of river Mississippi from a bluff on WS-35



The bluff had picnic tables and small hiking trails too. I did hiking for very short time and returned to the car and started driving in WS-35 further south.


Trail head in the bluff on WS-35


The next scenic view came and its the “Lock and Dam No. 8“. I haven’t heard about this lock systems for river navigations. Who knows? I might have read about it in school/college, I don’t remember now. I read about the locks & how it works in one of the near by boards. Its impressive to see how man customized the rivers for his navigation needs. The Mississippi river has 27 locks and the one I went is the no. 8. After spending sometime in that place, I started my car and drove again further south in the WI-35 state road.


Mississippi’s Lock & Dam system


The next spot is the “Blackhawk park”. This’ again a park similar to the Goose Island park. I drove around the campgrounds & small ponds, and enjoyed the scenic views & gravel road.


view of Mississippi & gravel road in the BlackHawk park


The road to campgrounds


One of the ponds in the Blackhawk park

After this park I drove further south in US-35, couldn’t find any scenic spots for few miles and it was already five in the evening, so I drove back to home and reached my place at 5.30. Its interesting, that I enjoyed the drive and explored new places though I started with no plans. I bet, life is also gonna be interesting like today even if I don’t have any future plans but just able to appreciate the present 🙂