Category: Random Thoughts, Observations and Weird Stuff
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Another Year, Another Itdyadi
I see it has been 18 months since my last post. In that time, a lot has happened in Bangladesh, to say the least. It has kept us all quite busy and on our toes. In the meantime, in the weeks prior to Eid ul Fitr 2024 – which was way back in April –…
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The Sky is NOT Always Blue in California
People in California’s Bay Area awoke this morning thinking, “I must have a few hours left to sleep” because the sky was so dark. A dingy sky carrying smoke and ash from the fires plaguing the state obscured the sun and cast an eerie pall over our neighborhood. There was no odor of smoke in…
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Every Day is a Surprise. Also, People are A$$h0Le5. (part 2)
And so, my motorcycle was repaired, and I planned for the next day to be completely uneventful – one of those days where you catch up on tasks that have been piling up. But I was wrong. The morning was pretty routine, and then I went to my place of work, where I saw that…
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Every Day is a Surprise. Also, People are A$$h0Le5.
Life is funny. Some days you wake up and things are – meh – run of the mill, nothing to write home about. Other days you wake up and experience a day you never imagined. I’ve had three traffic accidents in the last month. In the first, I was found at fault – a “tuktuk”…
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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. Â This is a relic of the American space program in the 1960s and 1970s. Â Here’s an excerpt about it from NASA’s book,…
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I Wonder What Mrs. Mangelly Would Say Now
Way back in 1977 – I was about 10 at the time – I wanted to learn the piano. But we had to be concerned with something called a “weight allowance” – the maximum weight the US government will agree to transport from assignment to assignment at their expense, every time they ask you to…
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Hark!! The Breadman Cometh
Every afternoon until well into the evening, at approximately half-hour intervals, you can hear an odd whistling sound loop in the village where we are staying, just outside of Weligama, at the southern tip of Sri Lanka. At first I thought it was the “ice cream man” but eventually we managed to find the source…
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Confessions of an EBay Junkie
This is what sixty bucks worth of junk looks like: OK, so I admit, I have a problem. Â I like to go on eBay and type “vintage camera” into the search bar and see what comes up. Â And I sort by time remaining, so invariably an interesting camera or two will pop up with 3…
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Thousands of bugs were bubbling up out of the ground…you’ll never guess what happened next!
On the grounds of a posh Himalayan resort – where the monkeys are normally kept at bay by G4S guards carrying long sticks – thousands of winged insects were bubbling up from the ground – seemingly from nowhere – and taking wing. It was the weirdest thing, because it was like they were appearing out…
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Backyard Aquaponics Project
A few years ago, my daughter wanted a fishtank for Christmas, which was cool for everyone because we all got to enjoy it in the living room. We kept live plants with the fish, and I noticed at the time that they tended to thrive in the water the fish lived in. Nitrites or nitrates…
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Drones, Kingfishers, and Joey Cook’s Ukulele
Goa, India’s diminutive state on the west coast, enjoys a certain reputation as a party destination, full of backpackers and bikinis, in search of yoga or outdoor sports. Â But it also has its wildlife – especially birds. I wrote about our visit to Goa’s Dr. Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary about a year ago when we…
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The Hidden Power of Gummy Bears
I am a clumsy person, unsuited for any sport that involves any sort of stick, ball or other implement. Â Running after a ball with a stick would pretty much be a guaranteed serious injury. Â My peers in elementary school gym class recognized this well before I did, and could find no better way to convey…
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Project Underwood: Typewriter Restoration
One evening about a year ago, my (younger) daughter and I were checking out typewriters on eBay. Â We share an interest in “retro” machines (this is how my camera craze started, and her last Christmas present was a record player), and inexplicably, we both wanted –Â needed – a typewriter. Â So we both picked one out…
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What do our TV ads say about us?
70 or 80 years from now, what will people think of us when they see the television commercials that we use to sell products to each other? If attitudes shift as much as they have over the last 70 to 80 years, it’s truly hard to imagine. Take a look at these television commercials from…
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Make Your Own 3-D Camera!
I was checking out the latest copy of Photo-Era Magazine (the latest I own, anyway) – dated April, 1929 – here’s the cover: It’s chock full of interesting articles on photography – and ads for the latest cameras, including this ad for an unfortunately named Voigtlander. Â One of the articles that caught my attention was…
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Celebrating Five Years of TAZM Pictures
On the occasion of TAZM Pictures celebrating five years on the web, I thought you might be a bit more forgiving as I write a more self-indulgent post (wait, aren’t they all self-indulgent?). tazmpictures dot com….but why make a website? No, it’s not because “everyone has a website.” Actually, the initial idea for TAZM Pictures…
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Hack Your Brain: Mrs. McKinley in 3D
I have an old Holmes stereoscope that dates from around 1900 or so. Â What’s a stereoscope? Â It’s a device that allowed you to look at two side-by-side photographs in such a way that the image appeared to be in 3 dimensions. This is not new technology. Â The earliest stereoscopes date from the 1830s. Â They were…
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A Story Behind Every Picture
They say every picture is worth 1,000 words. Â In the best case, a good picture tells a story. Â Sometimes the picture itself is the story. Â This is one of the cool things about photography. Take the photo below, for instance. Â Not a very good picture – out of focus, not well-framed, and the subject…
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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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Flashback: Vintage Kodak Commercials
If you’ve been wallowing in depression over the demise of Kodak, here are a few vintage films to cheer you up. First, there’s “America is Cameraland” – a 1960 infomercial (yes, they had those even then) that plays up the importance of capturing your lives in video and talks about all the great Kodak video…
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From the Township to the Championship: The Amazing Story Behind One Photo
This is Sofia Simon, a fifteen-year-old, in Giza, Egypt. Â She’s on a layover in Cairo, on her way to compete in the World Biathle Championships in Cyprus. Â Never heard of biathle? Â Eighteen months ago, neither had Sofia. Â Eighteen months ago, she couldn’t swim, either. Â And tomorrow she will represent her country in a sport that…
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Crater Lake and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
I just finished “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” – probably the only person to have never read this book. Â The characters follow almost the exact same route through Oregon and northern California as we did on our very own “Chautauqua” last summer. Â I have always been drawn to Crater Lake – I’m not…
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Is There Really Such a Thing as Too Many Cameras?
I was very excited to get a package this week containing twelve new old junk vintage cameras, bringing the size of my collection to around fifty. Â Here are the new arrivals: And (changing subjects briefly, but I’ll come back to this) India has a lot of monkeys – 13 types, in fact – but we…
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Reflecting on Afghanistan, 2006
Today, September 11, was a day of service to the local community. Â A group of Americans and Indians did some cleanup, painting, and entertaining of children at a local school for the mentally handicapped. Â The idea was to get out and do something for the needy, either in honor of those who lost their lives…
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Afghanistan: The Power of Photography
Free and open media are at the heart of maintaining a free and democratic state. This is especially applicable to photojournalism, due to the power of photographs to convey emotion and meaning often eluding other media forms. This was a key component of the thinking that led me, in 2009, to conceive of a photo…