Category: Photography
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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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Guest Post: Darkroom Blues: A Blast from the Past (Part II)
This is part 2 of an article shared by a photographer friend here in Chennai which was originally written for the Photographic Society of Madras, a local photographic society founded in 1857. The first part of the article is published here. The author, Rags Raghavan, has since moved on to digital photography. You can find…
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Guest Post: Darkroom Blues – a Blast from the Past (part 1)
A friend of mine here in Chennai shared an article with me the other day, which he had written for the Photographic Society of Madras, a local photographic society founded in 1857. It reminded me not only how far we have come – in this day and age where everyone is taking perfectly lit/focused photographs at…
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Big Photo Contest Win!
No, it wasn’t me. Although I did get an “honorable mention.” We used to tease my wife Anne over her insistence on using a camera that had long surpassed its obsolescence date. Until one day it was mysteriously found inside the (clothes) washer, and she was forced to upgrade her photographic equipment. And for the last…
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It’s 1914 and Everyone’s a Photo Critic
One hundred years ago this month, much of the world was at war. But in the United States – which would eventually mobilize 4 million military personnel – public opinion in 1914 was still firmly on the side of neutrality. This was very evident thumbing through this 100-year-old issue of “The Camera” magazine, published in Philadelphia.…
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Flower Collage
Here’s a fun photo project…and an idea I stole from my wife (I explained to her that I was improving on her idea – it didn’t go over well). Go find a green space and see how many flowers you can discover. Or bugs. Or whatever. And then make a photo collage out of them.…
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A Brief History of Photography…as of 1912.
I have a few old camera magazines – about a century old. It’s fun to flip through them every now and then and consider how much has changed…and in some cases, how little has changed…in the field of photography. The article below, from the December 1912 issue of “The Camera” magazine (cover above), recounts the…
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Photowalk: Gritty Black and White
One of my favorite camera/film combinations is a (relatively) cheap Ricoh Kr-5 Super II – at just over 20 years old, one of my newest cameras – and Tri-X black and white film. Lots of people go for “fine grain” black and white films, but I like the gritty look you get from this particular…
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Shooting with Expired Film
One of the folks I often get “found film” from accidentally shipped me unused film. Typically people will discover a partially or fully shot roll of film that has been completely forgotten inside an old camera. Sometimes (rarely) the roll will be inside the camera without having been exposed at all. You know you’ve messed…
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Processing Your Own Film
I recently had a query from someone on whether I would teach him how to process his own film. Unfortunately I’ve only been at it for about 9 months, far too short to be in any position to teach on the subject. But I can share what I know so far – and thought I’d…
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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;…
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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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Multi-Camera Composites
I came across an interesting image-producing technique a few months ago, the “multi-camera composite,” on the Flickr page of Tony Kemplen. [Sidebar: Tony Kemplen is known for his “52 film cameras in 52 weeks” project, which he started in 2010 and is now in his fourth year.] The idea behind the multi-camera composite is, you…
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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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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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Check Out my Entries for the B&H Wilderness Photo Contest!
B&H Photo (I really should own stock in that company, as much money as I send them) is hosting a Wilderness Photo Competition – and the grand prize(s) are safari trips to Namibia and Botswana. Yes, I’m sending mainly wildlife photos from Namibia – the irony is not lost on me. It wouldn’t do me…
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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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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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Cross Processing 127 Film
When I first started playing around with vintage cameras, I wasn’t sure what kind of film to order, and just for fun, ordered a roll of Rollei Crossbird, without really knowing what it was. It turns out this is slide film – i.e. “positive” or “color reversal” film you would use for old-fashioned slides, rather…
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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…