Category: Places
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We Two Ours One
As foreigners living in India, we constantly see things around us that leave us scratching our heads. There’s simply not enough time to chase them all down and figure out what they mean, so often we just accept them and move on, and eventually stop noticing. But every now and then, we figure one out.…
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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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Chennai’s Walls: an Endless Canvas
Chennai is full of walls. Many of them are marked “stick no bills” – and people will generally abide by that request. But the majority end up being political advertising space. The successive layers of paint upon paint, posters upon posters are accepted as a part of the texture of the city, and are rarely…
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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…
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Vintage Camera Test: No 2 Hawkeye Model C Anniversary Edition
This week’s vintage camera test is an interesting one (yes, but aren’t they all?), despite its rather long name. Waaaay back in the late 1880s, a small company called the Boston Camera Company introduced a model called the “Hawk-Eye” Detective camera. The Hawk-Eye Detective camera was unique in 1888 because it enclosed all of the…
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Guindy National Park
Smack in the middle of Chennai is a 2.8 square-kilometer national park – one of India’s smallest – which is an extension of the Tamil Nadu Governor’s residence. Along its fringes can be found the Snake Park, which I’ve posted about previously, and the Childrens’ Park, which on most days is filled with uniformed schoolchildren…
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At the Fair – Chennai Style
There’s a place in north-central Chennai where they set up the local “fair.” Called the “Island Grounds”, it’s the site of the 40th Tourism and Trade Fair. To be honest, we skipped most of the trade fair itself, but found the traditional rides-and-games-and-unhealthy-food part of the fair to be quite interesting, both from a cultural…
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Testing the Agfa Silette Rapid F
When I’m considering vintage cameras for purchase, I specifically look for cameras that still appear to work, and for which film can still be acquired somehow. Then, periodically, I grab a couple and test them out. This week, it’s the Agfa Silette Rapid F. This is actually one of the first cameras I acquired; when…
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Documenting the Dhobis
British soldiers may know the terms “doing your dhobi” (laundry) and “dhobi dust” (detergent) – but they may not be aware of these terms’ origins. A photographer friend recently spent several hours negotiating, on behalf of a small group of photographers, entry into a local “dhobi khana” or “dhobi ghat” – i.e. a community where…
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The Best Chowkidar in the Universe
Way back in 2007, on one of my earliest tours in Afghanistan, I was responsible for writing these weekly situation reports, and I recall there was an open source report being published in the UK that I would regularly rely on as a source, because the author was able to get more detailed information on…
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Short Film: Kinabatangan
I’ve been talking a lot about photography and vintage cameras on this blog, but originally this was all about video editing and production. This is the first “real” video I’ve done in some time – a short documentary film as opposed to some hastily thrown together clips. It’s based on our trip to the Malaysian…
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Two Towers, Two Cameras, Two Views on Photography
Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers make interesting photographic subjects – not because they are the tallest twin buildings in the world, but because of their shape and the textures and patterns on the outside of the building. At night, they are lit in such a way that these shapes and patterns are even more emphasized. So during…
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Greeting the New Year in Kuala Lumpur
Yes, I’m two weeks late. But it’s been a busy two weeks! We recently took our first trip to Malaysia, and wanted it to be a mix of big-city-Kuala-Lumpur / shopping, and seeing monkeys and apes in Borneo. Something for everyone. So New Year’s Eve, smack in the middle of the week-long trip, was spent…
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Mylapore’s Annual Kolam Contest
When I first arrived in southern India, I blogged about the “kolams” made by millions of women in India every day. So it turns out this is also a competitive sport of sorts! Over the last four days, the Mylapore Festival has been ongoing, and one of its main attractions has been the kolam contest. [side…
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Christmas Photowalk
This Christmas, several of us got things like lenses and other camera-related items in our stockings. So it was quite natural that we decided to take a “family photowalk” on Christmas Day, especially given that we are living in a foreign country, far from the close friends and family we might ordinarily be visiting over…
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Hanging Around in Hyderabad (Post #3)
For my third and final post on our trip to Hyderabad, I’m sharing a roll of Tri-X 400 film (black and white) I shot with my Ricoh Super Kr-5 II, a camera that’s barely vintage, having been manufactured in the mid-1990s. And, amazingly, for a roll of 36 photos, every single shot came out in…
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Hanging Around in Hyderabad (2nd Post)
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend a week working in Hyderabad, a city of 7 or so million in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh (which is in the process of splitting into two states – but that is another story). During my work week, I had little to no time…
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The Argus Seventy-Five: Great Photos for a So-Called “Toy” Camera
The Argus 75, also marketed as the Argus Seventy-Five and the Argoflex Seventy-Five*, is a bakelite pseudo TLR made by the Argus company between 1949 and 1964. It’s a simple, inexpensive, yet reliable little box camera that you would hang around your neck, look down into the large, clear viewfinder, and snap photos at waist…
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Hanging Around in Hyderabad
I had the opportunity to spend a bit of time in Hyderabad, India’s fourth-largest city. It has some very interesting and historically significant buildings and monuments, centuries-old bazaars, and the ancient ruins of an old fort – as well as friendly and interesting people. Here are some of my initial impressions – more to be…
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Photowalk in Georgetown (Chennai, India): the Flower Market
Third in a series of posts about a photowalk taken in northern Chennai, in a section of town called Georgetown. I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog that there are people – mainly older women – all over Chennai who make a living by stringing together flowers and selling them for about a dollar…
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Photowalk in Georgetown (Chennai, India): Poses
This is the second in a multi-part series about a recent photowalk in Georgetown, one of the most dense parts of Chennai, and virtually the only area to retain its colonial identifier. In a couple of days I hope to also post about the flower market, and the colorful photography opportunities it offered. But first…
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Photowalk: Odd Jobs in Georgetown (Chennai, India!)
This will be the first in a multi-post series on a Sunday morning photowalk in Georgetown – a part of Chennai, India. This part of the city , just inland from Chennai’s port, includes some of the city’s most crowded areas – notably Parry’s Corner – as well as a flower market with bulk flower…