Egg dum biryani (अंडा दम बिर्यानी)

This will feed 6 Adults.

Ingredients.

1. Eggs 12
2. Basmati rice 3 cups
3. Onions 5 large
4. Tomatoes 3 large
5. Curds 3/4 cup
6. Garlic 10 cloves
7. Ginger 1 inch piece
8. Coriander stems
9. Coriander fresh-cut copious
10. Mint leaves copious
11. Bay leaf 2
12. Cloves 6
13. Black Cardimon 2
14. Star anise 1
15. Jayatri 1
16. Cinamon 1 inch pieces 2
17. Black peppercorns 10
18. Salt to taste
19. Cooking oil of choice and quantity
20. Cumin seeds
21. Red chilli powder
22. Tumeric powder
23. Garam Masala or Biryani Masala
24. Cashews 20-30
25. Manuka / Sultana / Rasins 20-30
26. Saffron about 10 threads
27. Milk 1/4 cup

Collect all the ingredients. 

Make a paste of the garlic, ginger and the coriander stems.

Fry the cashews and keep aside.

Warm the milk and soak the saffron in it.

Wash the rice in water; drain the water and keep on side.

Start cooking in an open cooker pot which can be sealed later.

Hard boil the eggs.

Cut all onion longitudinally. Fry 50% of the onions is sufficient oil on high heat till they become brown (caramelized).

Like this.

In the same oil put 1/2 the spices, cumin and the onions to cook on low heat.

Add the ginger garlic paste to the onions and cook for some time till onions are translucent.

Add the diced tomatoes and cook further. Add turmeric powder, chilli powder and the garam masala/biryani powder.

Put a pot of water to boil with the rest of the spices. Add the washed rice and let it come to a boil.

Cook till the tomatoes pieces disappear. Reduce flame completely and let the mixture cool a bit. Then add the curds and stir well.  Add salt to taste. Adjust with more chilli powder and masala powder if needed.

Once the rice is 80% cooked, drain the water. Add all the de-shelled eggs on top of the masala. Add 25% of the fried onions, 25% of the coriander and 25% of the mint leaves on top of the eggs. Add the rice on top evenly. Sprinkle the saffron milk on top of the rice. Sprinkle the cashews and raisins. Evenly spread the remaining mint leaves, coriander and fried onions on top.

Now put the cooker top with the whistle and turn the heat to very low. Let it have the 'dum' for 15 minutes.

Eat.

Photo Editing Tutorial 1: The Path

The Path


The Path (Unedited)




All photos, even a regular photo of a not-too-glamorous scene can benefit from a little editing.

First of all, let us get one thing straight: All photos are processed. A camera sensor captures light which comes through a lens of a certain specification. This data from the sensor is processed by the camera hardware chip. This data is then further processed by the Camera software. This is the ‘RAW' photo state and some cameras can save it. If the output is JPEG or other such formats then this RAW photo data is further processed and then saved as a JPEG. Now, different lenses have different specification. Different sensors have different hardware and different cameras have different camera software. So what you get finally is a result of all this variable processing. And this still may not be what you saw!

What you see with your eyes (and interpreted by your brain) gives you a ‘feeling' about the frame. This feeling is what we want to communicate with others. We can do this via multiple mediums, a photograph is one of which. The photograph has to represent what we ‘saw'. There is often a gap between what we ‘saw' and what the output photo from your camera is. Editing is the mechanism of trying to bridge this gap.

“50% of the creative process occurred in the Dark Room” said Ansel Adams.

For us today, the darkroom is digital.

Let us see what we did to this particular photo. The editing was done on an Android phone using Snapseed software.



On observing the photo we find that the contrast is high. The sky is blown out with less detail. The foliate and grass are darker. In real life, it was a rainy overcast day. The sky was dark and set the mood. The toplight was enough to make the grass shine a very bright and fresh green. The overall feel was not so contrasty and stark. So we want to lower the contrast of this photo, darken the sky and lighten the grass. This kind of adjustment can be done using the HDR tool.

So in the first step, we apply the ‘HDR filter' with the ‘Nature' template. This usually results in the photo looking too artificial and dramatic to my taste. So after applying this filter we go to ‘view edits' and open the HDR edit in brush mode. Here we apply a mask of varying intensity. The sky benefits the most from the HDR filter as usually, the phone sensors are unable to differentiate between the different tones of the sky as they are all very close to each other in the high key. i.e. they are all similarly bright so the sensor captures them flat. HDR can also benefit in bringing out some shadows. Its effect on the mid-tones needs to be controlled, though.





The result has a better balance between the sky and the path.



Since the path is our central element we enhance its tonal contrast using the ‘Tonal Contrast' filter.



Finally, we use the ‘Selective' tool to increase some local contrast to bring out the foliage. This is done by selectively reducing or increasing the brightness, contrast and structure of the selection.



That's it. Thank you. Hope this was useful.

In Part 2 we will talk about tonality, light, shadow and other such weird things.

Bloom - HDR with a Phone Camera

Bloom - Baner-Aundh

This is an HDR. Clicked with the phone camera of Nokia Lumia 925. The Nokia camera software allows us to take bracketed exposures. I have been meaning to exploit this feature to do some HDR's since I got the phone. The problem is that even if there is a slight movement while clicking the various exposures, the resulting HDR become blurry and messy. There is a in phone HDR software available, but the results are strictly ok as it also suffers from the motion issue and the alignment of the individual exposures. A tripod is strictly required. So I got a Joby Griptight Phone Mount which attaches to any standard tripod. I had a small tripod available. I was ready to experiment.

So from my office terrace I shot a few of the above scene and got decent bracketed exposures.  Then, using Luminance HDR on my Mac, I got the above result. I am still new to this HDR game, so the result is not too impressive.

But the bloom on that tree definitely is. 

Digital Landscapes and Contrast Masking

This short essay is inspired by one of my flickr friends who goes by the nick Patryaa. He is a trekker and his very nice panoramic photo of Pratapgad made me want to see if I can make its digital form slightly better.


Original Photo

What we observe from this photo is that the dynamic range of the light on this occasion is very large. There are the clouds and even though they dont look that bright to the human eye, they are very bright as compared to the scene below which is in the shadows. This range cannot be captured directly on film or by digital sensor (though digital sensor does a better job at it - it has a lot more shadow detail than film). What one has to do in such a situation is to shoot for the highlight - do not have burned pixels. They are irrecoverable and photo is wasted. Patryaa has done a good job at keeping the highlights. Now e need to flatten the contrast of this image so that the shadows, which are very dense, come out a bit. In traditional photography it would mean dodging the shadows. In digital photo editing, we achieve this (with far greater control than traditional dodging) using a technique called Contrast Masking.

First let us correct the level by applying a gamma to bring out the shadows. (This is by moving the middle marker in a levels control panel)


Photo with Levels correction applied


Then we apply a contrast mask to the shadows.
For this:

1. Select the shadows using the 'select' tool.
   
2. Copy the selection to different layer and name it "Contrast Mask - Shadows" and select it.
   
3. Desaturte
   
4. Invert
   
5. Now change blend mode to "Overlay".
   
6. Apply Gaussian blur. Try different strengths from 25-50. You will have different effect depending on your image dimensions. Use your judgment to choose a value which 'looks' the best and least affects surrounding areas.
   
7. Change the opacity of the layer to about 70% (or any other sane value you like) so that there is subtleness in the effect
   

Photo with Contrast Mask applied to the shadows

Now our layers correction had affected the highlights. So apply a contrast mask to the them. Follow the same steps as above except select the highlights instead of shadows.


Photo with additional Contrast Mask applied to the highlights


The thing to remember about digital photo editing and post processing is that we have to be subtle. Manipulations which completely change the 'light' or the 'feel' or the 'truth' of the photo end up creating 'digital art' not photographs.

These kind of techniques become quite important when one uses digital sensors. For example the shadow detail which can be recovered from digital sensor photos is greater than what is possible from film.