100 Strangers
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Stranger No. 13
If you have been following along up to this point, you may have noticed that so far all of the “strangers” on this site have been male. Part of this project is getting the courage to start a conversation with a stranger on the street and ask to take their picture. For a foreign male
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Stranger No. 12
Andanan (spelling) was sitting on the floor of what you might consider a garage, with piles of bundles of banana leaves behind him. He was taking them, one leaf at a time, and cutting them into pieces about 18 inches long, and throwing the unusable parts away. In India (Tamil Nadu, anyway), it is traditional
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Stranger No. 11
Stranger No. 11 is Abdul Ghafar. Â I actually didn’t ask his permission before shooting – I saw him across the way, and he was so engrossed in his work, and the light was perfect, so I started taking shots nonstop. Â I went over afterward to make a point of introducing myself because I specifically wanted
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Stranger No. 10
Pandiyan was also in the market. Quiet and pensive, he didn’t mind me zooming all the way in close. When I showed him his picture, he so much appreciated it that he broke off a sprig of cedar he was selling and gave it to me. I like how his eyes shine on the close-up
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Stranger No. 9
I met Salokmar at the flower market in George Town. He was somewhat reserved, so we didn’t chat much – maybe it was the fact that it was still before 7 am – but he didn’t object to my taking his picture. The flower market makes a great place for photography, with the brightly colored
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Stranger No. 8
I stopped to chat with Vasanth and almost got separated from my group. Venkath and a partner are in the bottled water delivery business (see his truck behind him). He gave me a card for his business, “Done Marketing” Packaged Drinking Water Supply, we chatted for a few moments, and we were both on our
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Stranger No. 7
This is Akash, who caught my eye because he seemed to be very proud of his bicycle. So instead of the usual close-up portrait, I decided to take a wider angle shot showing the object of his pride. At the time, I thought the photo had come out better than it had – but it
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Strangers Nos. 5 and 6
Apu and Siva were on their way somewhere when they spotted about a dozen folks with cameras heading toward them, snapping photos in all directions as they moved. They asked several folks to snap their photo, and given that they were in a photographic mood, I approached them and asked to snap their portrait. They
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Stranger No. 4
This morning, I went for a walk in Chintadripet, a suburb in central Chennai, and met a smiling Mohammed, the proprietor at Chandrika Fast Foods, getting ready for the breakfast crowd. I asked him if I could take his photo exactly where he was sitting, as he looked very much at ease; we had a
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Stranger No. 3
Stranger number three spoke virtually no English, but he saw my camera and insisted on having his photo taken. Â We don’t know his name, but he lives in the semi-informal community along the canal in R.A. Puram, Chennai. Â With any luck, I’ll bring him a copy of his portrait and learn his name at that
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Stranger No. 2
Meet Apu, who wouldn’t say a word but took his lead from the younger Ashok (stranger #1). along with a third friend, he he was helping open shop at a roadside grill on Greenways Road in Chennai.
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Stranger No. 1
I’ve finally kicked off my “100 Strangers” project, and am rushing to catch up with my fellow photogs in this venture. The idea behind the project is to explain what you’re doing, get to know your subject, and work with them to get their best pose. On this, my first stranger (and on the
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Remembering Sierra Leone
Today Sierra Leone was officially declared “Ebola-free”, having successfully gone 42 days (two incubation periods) without a new case of Ebola. Â In neighboring Guinea, where the disease outbreak began, health workers continue to struggle for its eradication, working to save patients only a few miles from Sierra Leone’s border. When I was in Sierra Leone
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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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Life Goes On in Kathmandu (part 1)
I wish my visit to Nepal had been under different circumstances. I arrived late on April 27 – after hours on the tarmac in New Delhi, waiting for a parking berth to be on the forecast so the plane could take off. Thankfully the airline arranged for an extra meal to be delivered while we
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The Ashram: Following in the Beatles’ Footsteps
One of the places we were eager to see on our recent trip to Rishikesh, in northern India, was the so-called “Beatles Ashram.”  The former ashram of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, on the left bank of the Ganges overlooking Rishikesh, is where the Beatles went in 1968 to learn about Transcendental Meditation.   They wrote a few
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Varanasi: Walking the Ghats
In previous posts I’ve talked about the “ghats” of Varanasi. Â People keep asking me, “What exactly IS a ghat, anyway?” Basically it’s a series of steps leading down to the river. Â We spent hours walking along the ghats. And not just because walking parallel to the stairs is much easier than walking up and down
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Dispatch from Sierra Leone: Walking in Freetown
There are two seasons in Sierra Leone: Â the dry season…and the rainy season. Â Although there is some rain in the “dry” season, the vast majority of the 3Â 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. Â Some people
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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. Â 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. Â Here are some of my initial impressions – more to be
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An Oshikandela, by any other name…
In our local grocery shop you can buy a couple of different varieties of yoghurt drink. Â Two popular kinds sit right next to each other on the shelf. Â I’m not a big breakfast eater; as I did when I lived in Europe, I like to take a drinkable yoghurt to work in the morning. Â I
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Namibian fairy circles – mystery solved?
There’s an odd phenomenon in southern Africa – especially in Namibia – that the locals call “fairy circles”, whereby vegetation refuses to grow inside a circle of anywhere from 3 to 10 meters in diameter. Even stranger, the circles are dynamic – apparently they grow and “die”, to be filled in by grasses. While they
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A Video Contest to Support the Troops!
After some recent small successes, we’re taking a shot at the eCompliments video contest offers a grand prize of $10,000 for the highest-rated video (as voted by the public) that compliments any person, place, thing, business, organization…you get the picture. As of this writing we’ve got 90 votes, behind the front-runner with well over 1,000