Category: Photography
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Mahajanga, Madagascar: Antsanitia Resort – View from the Sky
We’re doing much better at seeing the country to which we’ve been assigned early in our tour, rather than late, rushing, and ending up with a list of “places we wish we’d gone.” Of Madagascar’s noteworthy destinations (really the list is endless, but let’s focus on the main towns), we have yet to make it to…
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Trip to Nosy Be
I knew we had chosen the right place when the owner/manager greeted us in shorts and bare feet. No snooty welcome drinks and wet towels here! Although when I think back, I think there were actually welcome drinks and wet towels. But with a different vibe… Nosy Be is a mixed bag in terms of…
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When Madagascar played host to NASA
If you drive down the highway about 32 km southwest of Antananarivo, you may be surprised to see a giant white satellite dish next to some abandoned buildings not far from the road. This is a relic of the American space program in the 1960s and 1970s. Here’s an excerpt about it from NASA’s book,…
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DJI Mavic Pro: First Flight! (Antananarivo, Madagascar)
Finally, it has arrived! Back in mid-October, I heard that DJI, the company that manufactured the first drone I owned, was releasing a small, foldable drone with an integrated camera. In other words, one that would allow me to carry something besides just a drone on my back when we go hiking in Madagascar! I figured…
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Madagascar: Solar Eclipse at the Pangalanes Canal
I got an email from somebody at some point, soon after we arrived in Madagascar: there was to be a full solar eclipse, and we were invited to stay at the “Bush Camp” on the Pangalanes Canal, wherever that was. I did some digging and found out that there is a series of lakes and…
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Madagascar: Visiting the Tsingy de Bemaraha (Part 2)
This post is a continuation of my previous post, where I described out trip from Antananarivo to Morondava, and then north across two rivers and to the “petit tsingy” and a boat ride through the Manamobolo Gorge and the caves that border it. In this post, I will share our experience in the “grand tsingy”…
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Madagascar: Visiting the Tsingy de Bemaraha (Part 1)
Travel and Leisure has listed Madagascar as one of its 50 places to visit in 2017. Since we’re talking about a country that would stretch from New York City to the tip of Florida, I’ll help narrow things down a bit. Despite the hassle of getting there, the Tsingy the Bemaraha National Park is one…
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Madagascar’s Majestic Baobabs
I’ve been pretty quiet here on the blog – we have been hard at work on some crowdfunding initiatives, and in between, I have been editing some of the video footage I shot on our trip to Madagascar’s west coast. Way back in August! That’s when we took a trip that most foreigners who spend…
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Anjezika: Antananarivo’s “Waterworld”
This is Anjezika. Once a vibrant fishing and rice-growing village, it has gradually been encircled and choked off by the surrounding city of Antananarivo, Madagascar. Now, nobody grows anymore rice here. A few small fish can be collected from the stagnant water that separates small squares of low-lying land where the people have built their…
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Heartbreaking
As in many parts of the world, when you drive around urban areas of Madagascar, people will tap on your window asking for money. Frequently these are little people. There are many theories about how to respond – sometimes the kids are exploited by adults and sent out to beg, often carrying babies – and…
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Introducing Analog / Film Cameras to a New Generation
You don’t have to be as old as me to remember using analog/film cameras. But there’s an entire generation entering university (depending on where you grew up) that has grown up with photography as a purely digital phenomenon – often involving phones. Awhile back when we were still living in India, a friend I met…
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Children of the Street: Ankorondrano
A group of about a dozen kids gathers on a small patch of green with a few benches and trees. Basically a large roundabout. Imagine an oblong Dupont Circle, except Starbucks is 3,000 miles away. The sound of traffic is constant. Two young volunteers lug a bag of supplies to a cement bench and quietly…
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Children of the Street: Ambohijatovo
In this third installment on a project Anne and I are involved in, we assist “Zanaky Ny Lalana”(Children of the Street) at yet another location. This week we went to Ambohijatovo, one of the ten locations where Malagasy volunteers for “Teach for Madagascar” currently hold sessions. Teach for Madagascar is a program whereby Malagasy volunteers provide literacy and…
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Children of the Street: Ampefiloha
Last week I posted about a new project Anne and I are involved in – assisting the NGO “Teach for Madagascar” via a group of street photographers called “Zanaky Ny Lalana” (Children of the Street). This week we went to another of the ten locations where Malagasy volunteers teach children who don’t have access to other…
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Children of the Street: Anjezika
“Zanaky Ny Lalana” is a group of street photographers that was brought together about a half year ago with the goal of highlighting the challenges faced by some of Madagascar’s most vulnerable inhabitants. I don’t exactly have much in the way of street photography credentials, but we were fortunate in that the group’s founder has allowed us…
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Travels in Madagascar: in and around Ampefy
Ampefy is a little town about 100km west of Antananarivo, in a landscape dominated by volcanic landforms – many of the surrounding hills have the telltale conical shape of dormant volcanoes. There are a few hotels in town, but we opted for an AirBnB (yes, even in Madagascar!) lakeside lodge that went for around $22…
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First Photowalk in Tana
We’ve had a few weeks to settle into the groove here in Antananarivo (pronounce “tananarive” but more frequently shortened to “tana”) and so we figured it was high time we got out and about with our cameras. There is so much going on, and so many fascinating street scenes to photograph here – but we…
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Flying Solo over the Shenandoah
When I first saw footage taken on DJI’s new consumer drone, my response was, “MUST HAVE.” I’m now on my second camera drone, the 3D Robotics Solo, and I’m still in search of the elusive magical footage – soaring over the Okavango Delta as a herd of Wildebeest run from some unseen predator, flying in…
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3DR Solo: Droning in the Snow
I love these camera-toting quadcopters. Partly because it’s just fun to fly stuff around (yes, I’m still about 12 at heart) but mostly because of the new opportunities they offer for photography and videography. After seeing the first few videos people had made with them, I was hooked. The problem is, the technology moves so…
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Washington, DC by Night
Washington, D.C. is an interesting place to photograph, but it goes without saying that it’s completely different from the photography environment we had gotten accustomed to in India. A couple of weeks ago we became aware that there was going to be a “supermoon” – a larger (closer) than normal full moon, and via Meetup.com…
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Stars over Shenandoah
It’s Labor Day weekend in the Shenandoah Valley and it’s packed with tourists escaping to the country to enjoy the fresh air, nature and sunshine. I wonder how many of them noticed the night sky? I used a low ISO to cut down on “noise” – but this means a 30 second exposure. The…
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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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The Chennai Photowalk
One of the best things about Chennai, for us, was the “photowalks.” A photowalk is basically just walking around with a camera and seeing what you can photograph. Often these walks are in groups. I discovered photowalks in Chennai, though they happen all over the world – and there is even such a thing as…
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Birdwatching from the Hotel Pool
One of the highlights from our recent trip to Jaipur was the beautiful hotel pool. On our last day there, fed up with the heat, waiting for an evening flight, we arranged for a late checkout and decided to spend the morning lounging by the pool. After reading a bit, I noticed a couple of…
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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…