Repairing Old Paperbacks

Do-Something-Everyday: May 12, 2016

My husband has about a dozen of his favorite author's novels in paperback. As you can see in the photo above they all are pretty tattered. He asked me to look for a binder who can fix these books for him. I told him he was looking at one. Laughing out loud, he did not connect all the journals I make with bookbinding. So, I fixed one today using a simple technique of gluing the spine

Altering a Photo by Hand (with a little help from Photoshop)

Do-Something-Everyday, May 11, 2016

Just as I was about to take the photo of this peacock, the little boy broke away from his mother and started bawling his eyes out oblivious to the magnificent creature in front of him.

What I Did on Mother's Day

Do-Something-Everyday, May 10, 2016

This Mother's Day I decided to stay home and cook a nice lunch for my husband and me (my husband did offer to take me out for lunch). We are empty-nesters and cooking has now become more of a pleasure than a chore.  The lunch was a combo of healthy and indulgent: cucumber-tomato pachadi (raita), Rajma (Indian kidney beans) and poori (fried Indian bread).

Book Review: Marriage Material

Do-Something-Everyday, May 9, 2016

Told with tenderness and occasional caustic humor, Sathnam Sanghera’s Marriage Material is a novel about three generations of a Sikh family settled in Wolverhampton, England. The familiar ingredients of this genre, struggle, filial duty, inter-generational conflict, cultural misunderstanding, language barrier, assimilation, to name a few,

Altered Photography: Toddy Tapper

 Do-Something-Everyday, May 6, 2016

While traveling in Wayanad, back in January, I took a series of photos of a toddy trapper climbing a tall palm tree to retrieve the toddy bag. I was standing about 300 yards away and I used the landscape mode on my camera to photograph the action.  The photos captured the line of tall palm trees well but the climber became less of a focal point  amidst the cluster of trees. I wanted to highlight the climber. Here is how I did it.

Removing Unwanted Objects in Photos Using Photoshop

Do-Something-Everyday, May 5 2016

There is nothing more annoying than seeing an unwanted object ruining a well composed photo. Take the photo above on the left side.  This is a photo that I took of the La Concha hotel in Key West, Florida.  I took the photo from across the street and I was able to capture the hotel fully in height and breadth. However, the photo is marred by a protruding traffic light on the right. Because of that, I had never been able to use the photo. But now, there is rescue available with the Content Aware feature in Photoshop Element. This feature has been available in the pricier Photoshop CS for a while but Adobe put it in PSE version 13. This feature is really a photo saver. Here is how you do it:

Blue Wednesday

Do-Something-Everyday, May 4, 2016

The other day suddenly a group of blue jays chattering nervously took shelter in the lilac bush. As I watched, way up a hawk circled and then glided past the yard. A really scary moment for  the blue jays.