Tag: India
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Testing the Minolta SR-T-101
Awhile back, I posted about the Petri 7S, one of two cameras my mother-in-law had passed along to me. This post is on the other camera, a Minolta SR-T-101. This Minolta is an SLR that first appeared on the market in 1966 and continued to be manufactured until 1975. From this website you can figure…
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Final Chennai Photowalk
I’ve been out of India for over three weeks now, but wanted to finish sharing our experiences of our last few weeks in India before closing out that wonderful chapter in our lives, as documented in the TAZM Pictures blog. We have been doing photowalks for the last couple of years, and would often return to…
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Found Film: My Very First Camera
What was your first camera? Mine wasn’t the one pictured above, but it was close: A Kodak Instamatic X-15 like the one pictured below. This camera was manufactured between 1970 and 1976. I got mine toward the end of that period, when I would have been 8 or 9 years old. But mine is somewhere in…
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Vintage Camera Test: Brownie Reflex Synchro Model
The Brownie Reflex Synchro Model was made between 1941 and 1952 in the US, and until 1960 in the UK, and closely followed the (non-synchro) Brownie Reflex. It was called a “Reflex” because, like most SLR (single lens reflex) cameras still in use today, it used a mirror to reflect the image from the lens…
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Jaipur, India: Street Photography Goldmine
I have done a few posts already about our trip to Jaipur, India. It was only a 4-day trip, but as I have been looking through our photos, it’s surprising the number and quality of interesting shots we were able to get in such a short time. Especially considering that it was 104 Fahrenheit and…
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MORE Monkeying Around in Jaipur
Our recent trip to Jaipur, in Rajasthan, India’s largest state, was short but we brought back a lot of photos. I posted awhile back about our encounter with monkeys our first day there; it turns out this would not be our only encounter! Our second day there, we decided to make our way to what…
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Strolling (and Rafting) through Rishikesh
Not too long ago, we had a chance to visit Rishikesh, in northern India and the Himalayan foothills, known as a top yoga and adventure travel destination. You may have also heard about Rishikesh as the site of the ashram where the Beatles stayed in the late 1960s, and where they sought (and found, apparently)…
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When 2000 Giant Ganesha Idols are Immersed in the Sea
My Indian friends who grew up nearby tell me it wasn’t always like this. They say when they were growing up, during the festival Ganesh Chaturthi, they would have a small clay statue of Lord Ganesha, one of Hinduism’s most important deities, which would be dissolved in a pond or a container of water at…
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Tirukalukundram
Eighteen kilometers west of the Tamil Nadu tourist town of Mahabalipuram is a town of about 24,000 called Tirukaludundram which is known for its hilltop temple, the Vedagiriswarar temple. The temple consists of an upper part up on a hill, which can actually be seen all the way from Mahabalipuram: and a lower part consisting of multiple…
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Backyard Aquaponics Project
A few years ago, my daughter wanted a fishtank for Christmas, which was cool for everyone because we all got to enjoy it in the living room. We kept live plants with the fish, and I noticed at the time that they tended to thrive in the water the fish lived in. Nitrites or nitrates…
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Pongal in Chennai / Camera Test
Often I blog about old cameras I’m testing out, often I blog about things we see and experience in India. This post has a little of both! The Ansco Agfa Karomat 36 (known by variants of that name) is an Agfa Karat 36 rebadged for the American market, where it was sold by Ansco from…
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Chennai’s Republic Day Parade
Today was a pretty special day in India – even President Obama agreed, as he spent the better part of the day with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, having been invited as Chief Guest for the annual Republic Day Parade. President Obama is honored to be back in #India to celebrate Republic Day and to begin…
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Chennai by Night: Bhogi
I have some interesting photos and videos to share since I last posted in mid-December – but first, some information on the current happenings in Chennai! It’s Thai Pongal, the four-day harvest festival and one of the most important holidays in Tamil Nadu and for Tamil people in general. The festival actually begins tomorrow. But…
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Varanasi: The View from Mother Ganga
Varanasi, India is, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Also known as Benares, Banaras or Kashi, the city’s identity is inseparable from the River Ganges, along whose left bank the city of just over 1 million residents is nestled. If you visit Varanasi, one of the experiences not to be missed is…
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Camera Test: Ansco Readyflash
The Ansco Readyflash – so named because it’s “ready for flash” (but I don’t have one) via two connectors on the camera – is about as simple a box camera as you could probably come up with. It’s made of sheet metal and plastic, and takes 8 exposures on a roll of 620 film, 6…
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Varanasi by Night
We finally had the opportunity to visit Varanasi, India – also known as Benares or Kashi – one of the seven holy cities of Hinduism and Jainism, and also important in the development of Buddhism. Varanasi, a city of 3 million on the western bank of the Ganges River, is said to be one of…
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Day at the Beach
Marina Beach, Chennai, India
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Indian Portraits from the 1950s and 1960s
Between Chennai and Pondicherry is an area with an especially high proliferation of “junk stores. I suppose the owners would prefer we’d call them antique shops – but there actually aren’t that many actual antiques, just lots of oddities and strange treasures, many of which are made to look old. In the back of one…
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Impressions of Koyambedu
Koyambedu Wholesale Market Complex is one of Asia’s largest perishable goods market complexes. Spread over an area of 295 acres, the complex consists of more than 1,000 wholesale shops and 2,000 retail shops. The market has two blocks for vegetable shops and one each for fruit and flower shops. In Phase II, a textile market, and in Phase III,…
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Photographing Chennai’s Kids
A number of different photographer groups in Chennai regularly organize photowalks – walks through various neighborhoods in Chennai. The potential photographic subjects will vary – sometimes it’s market vendors, or stately old buildings, still life, fishing villages. In certain situations, exercising your abilities as a photographer can be difficult, because – rather than you seeking…
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Checking in with Rocky
I recently had the opportunity to meet Rocky Braat, the subject of an amazing documentary called “Blood Brother,” winner of both the Audience and Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2013. The film tells the story of a disillusioned young American who goes to India to find meaning in his life and finds it at an…
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Chennai: Textures
I’ve posted before about Chennai’s endless walls and the fact that many of them get postered, painted, repainted and repostered. This creates interesting textures; so much so, that one of my predecessors did an entire photographic exhibition on just that theme – and sold many of his photos to boot! When I heard about that,…
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Chennai: Grit and Grain
In Namibia, photography was all about long lenses, tripods, “the golden hour”, and finding the right guide. Since moving to Chennai, a large city in India, the lenses have gotten much shorter, shooting is sometimes instinctive; and sweeping landscapes have made way for the grit and grime of everyday human life, toil, and aging buildings.…
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Badrian Street and the Flower Market
Badrian Street or “Budirian Street” as it is painted on the street sign, is the site of Chennai’s old wholesale flower market. While technically, the vendors in what is commonly known as “poo-k-kadai,” sell “wholesale”, their typical clients are ladies who buy less than a kilogram of flowers, typically to be woven into garlands using banana…
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Goa is for the Birds – Literally
Just north of Panaji, Goa’s “small but spritely” capital, where the Mapusa and Mandovi Rivers meet, is what appears to be an island – Chorao Island – which has 11,000 inhabitants, and whose western end is a 1.8 square kilometer mangrove forest known as the Dr. Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary. Looking at the map, it…