Category: Places
-
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…
-
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…
-
Varanasi: Walking the Ghats
In previous posts I’ve talked about the “ghats” of Varanasi. People keep asking me, “What exactly IS a ghat, anyway?” Basically it’s a series of steps leading down to the river. We spent hours walking along the ghats. And not just because walking parallel to the stairs is much easier than walking up and down…
-
Varanasi: In and Around Town
There is an endless number of interesting faces, places and scenes to photograph in Varanasi. Last week I shared some photos of the ghats along the river – where most of the tourists hang out; but in this city of 3 million and its environs you can go just about anywhere in the city and…
-
Death along the Ganges
As Americans – like most “Westerners” – we are for the most part, relatively isolated from death. Not that we don’t have people close to us dying – we just don’t deal with the specifics. I reflected on this just a few weeks ago, when we lost our longtime family dog in India, and suddenly had…
-
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…
-
Dispatch From Sierra Leone: Return Home
So, I’ve been back a week, but a lot has been going on. I wanted to go back and share some final impressions of what was a fascinating, extremely challenging month in this small West African country I never imagined I’d go and visit (as an aside: under different circumstances, i.e. flights readily available and…
-
Dispatch from Sierra Leone: River Number Two Beach – Part 2
Just sharing a couple of short videos we did at “River Number Two” Beach south of Freetown, Sierra Leone. Overcast day at the beach, what better activity than to fly a quadcopter with GoPro around the beach? We took a trip up the river itself, and later hung out on the beach, where some of…
-
Dispatch from Sierra Leone: Day at the Beach
This weekend the weather was supposed to be – well, “not as bad.” So we planned a trip to the beach – a great opportunity to unwind a bit after a harrowing few weeks at work. A co-worker and I got up before dark and got dropped at River Number Two Beach, which is “google…
-
Dispatch From Sierra Leone: Sunset
Awful news from next door in Liberia in articles like this and this. Here in Freetown, we’ve gotten some relief from the rain, and (knocks on wood) the number of new ebola cases per day has slowed considerably. Let’s hope the break in bad weather continues. Yes, this last one is an HDR trick. More…
-
Breaking Rocks in Sierra Leone
This morning I woke up to a rare non-rainy August morning in Freetown. Saturday! So I grabbed my quadcopter and my camera and headed out to one of the highest-rated local beaches, River No. 2 Beach, where the local community has collaborated to create a nice spot frequented by locals and foreigners alike. After an hour-long,…
-
Dispatch from Sierra Leone: Walking in Freetown
There are two seasons in Sierra Leone: the dry season…and the rainy season. Although there is some rain in the “dry” season, the vast majority of the 3 meters of rain that fall on Freetown during a typical year occur between May and October, with an average of an inch a day in August. Some people…
-
Dispatch from Sierra Leone: Rain and Monkeys
It has been an extremely challenging first week in Sierra Leone. An ebola outbreak – the world’s worst to date – has stretched the country’s already limited medical capacity to the limit. Although the epidemic has been going on since May, for some reason the media chose the last week or so to spin this…
-
Return to the Dhobi Khana
Don’t like doing laundry? These people earn a living doing laundry the old-fashioned way. At various “dhobi khanas” in India, washing clothes – but more often things like sheets, towels, and occasionally uniforms – is still done by hand at facilities like this one by “dhobis” – who have been doing this for generations. This…
-
Gypsies in India
We regularly join “photowalks” here in Chennai, and were surprised to hear we were going to visit a “gypsy colony.” A bit of googling informed me that the “Roma” people speak a language closely related to Hindi, and are thought to originate somewhere in or near India. Here they are not known as Roma people;…
-
It’s Jackfruit Season in India!
-Wait, what’s a jackfruit??? You may know, but we didn’t, before we moved to India. And if I had ever encountered one on a tree, I certainly wouldn’t know what to do with it! Take a look at these pictures. Weird, right? And they’re huge! Jackfruits are one of the “big 3” most auspicious fruits…
-
Day at the Beach
Marina Beach, Chennai, India
-
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…
-
Random Scenes from Bangalore
We took a stroll through “Gandhi Bazaar” in Bangalore – also known as “Basavanagudi” – last weekend, and I thought I share some random – if occasionally odd – photos. The first photo is literally a bunch of leaves. It’s “paan” – or betel leaves. These leaves are used to wrap a mixture of substances…
-
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,…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Kasimedu Fishing Harbor
At the northern end of Chennai’s coast, just north of the Chennai port, where, at any given time, hundreds of trucks stretch in a long line waiting to load or unload goods, is Kasimedu fishing harbor – also known as Royapuram fishing harbor, for the town section nearby. The harbor has a capacity of 575…
-
Repurposing Indian Doors
If you have an old camera or two, it looks nice on a bookshelf with a couple of hardcover books. But what do you do with 75 old cameras? Who has that many bookshelves? It seemed a shame to have them packed away out of sight, but I wondered what kind of shelves would be…