Category: Life in India
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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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Testing the Minolta SR-T-101
Awhile back, I posted about the Petri 7S, one of two cameras my mother-in-law had passed along to me. This post is on the other camera, a Minolta SR-T-101. This Minolta is an SLR that first appeared on the market in 1966 and continued to be manufactured until 1975. From this website you can figure…
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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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Jaipur, India: Street Photography Goldmine
I have done a few posts already about our trip to Jaipur, India. It was only a 4-day trip, but as I have been looking through our photos, it’s surprising the number and quality of interesting shots we were able to get in such a short time. Especially considering that it was 104 Fahrenheit and…
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MORE Monkeying Around in Jaipur
Our recent trip to Jaipur, in Rajasthan, India’s largest state, was short but we brought back a lot of photos. I posted awhile back about our encounter with monkeys our first day there; it turns out this would not be our only encounter! Our second day there, we decided to make our way to what…
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Monkeying Around in Jaipur
With only a month or so before we leave India, we finally made it to Rajasthan, the country’s largest state, located on the northwestern border with Pakistan, and home to the inhospitable Thar Desert. Literally translated as the “land of kings”, Rajasthan could easily be the destination for a half dozen or more individual trips…
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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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Strolling (and Rafting) through Rishikesh
Not too long ago, we had a chance to visit Rishikesh, in northern India and the Himalayan foothills, known as a top yoga and adventure travel destination. You may have also heard about Rishikesh as the site of the ashram where the Beatles stayed in the late 1960s, and where they sought (and found, apparently)…
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Petri 7S Test
Half a year ago, my mother-in-law asked me if I could use an old Petri 7S and a Minolta SRT101 they had laying around and after some quick research online I responded “most definitely!” The Minolta will be the subject of a later post – this one is about the Petri. The Kuribayashi Camera Industry,…
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When 2000 Giant Ganesha Idols are Immersed in the Sea
My Indian friends who grew up nearby tell me it wasn’t always like this. They say when they were growing up, during the festival Ganesh Chaturthi, they would have a small clay statue of Lord Ganesha, one of Hinduism’s most important deities, which would be dissolved in a pond or a container of water at…
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Hiking in a Himalayan Hailstorm
We went on a trek this morning – quite short and easy by trekkers’ standards, but pretty long for old(er) folks staying at a resort in the Himalayas where there’s a golf cart and driver if you don’t feel up to walking down the hill from reception to your room. In total it was about…
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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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Pongal in Chennai / Camera Test
Often I blog about old cameras I’m testing out, often I blog about things we see and experience in India. This post has a little of both! The Ansco Agfa Karomat 36 (known by variants of that name) is an Agfa Karat 36 rebadged for the American market, where it was sold by Ansco from…
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Chennai’s Republic Day Parade
Today was a pretty special day in India – even President Obama agreed, as he spent the better part of the day with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, having been invited as Chief Guest for the annual Republic Day Parade. President Obama is honored to be back in #India to celebrate Republic Day and to begin…
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Chennai by Night: Bhogi
I have some interesting photos and videos to share since I last posted in mid-December – but first, some information on the current happenings in Chennai! It’s Thai Pongal, the four-day harvest festival and one of the most important holidays in Tamil Nadu and for Tamil people in general. The festival actually begins tomorrow. But…
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Varanasi: The View from Mother Ganga
Varanasi, India is, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Also known as Benares, Banaras or Kashi, the city’s identity is inseparable from the River Ganges, along whose left bank the city of just over 1 million residents is nestled. If you visit Varanasi, one of the experiences not to be missed is…
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Varanasi: Walking the Ghats
In previous posts I’ve talked about the “ghats” of Varanasi. People keep asking me, “What exactly IS a ghat, anyway?” Basically it’s a series of steps leading down to the river. 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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Varanasi: In and Around Town
There is an endless number of interesting faces, places and scenes to photograph in Varanasi. Last week I shared some photos of the ghats along the river – where most of the tourists hang out; but in this city of 3 million and its environs you can go just about anywhere in the city and…
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Death along the Ganges
As Americans – like most “Westerners” – we are for the most part, relatively isolated from death. Not that we don’t have people close to us dying – we just don’t deal with the specifics. I reflected on this just a few weeks ago, when we lost our longtime family dog in India, and suddenly had…
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Varanasi by Night
We finally had the opportunity to visit Varanasi, India – also known as Benares or Kashi – one of the seven holy cities of Hinduism and Jainism, and also important in the development of Buddhism. Varanasi, a city of 3 million on the western bank of the Ganges River, is said to be one of…
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Return to the Dhobi Khana
Don’t like doing laundry? These people earn a living doing laundry the old-fashioned way. At various “dhobi khanas” in India, washing clothes – but more often things like sheets, towels, and occasionally uniforms – is still done by hand at facilities like this one by “dhobis” – who have been doing this for generations. This…
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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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It’s Jackfruit Season in India!
-Wait, what’s a jackfruit??? You may know, but we didn’t, before we moved to India. And if I had ever encountered one on a tree, I certainly wouldn’t know what to do with it! Take a look at these pictures. Weird, right? And they’re huge! Jackfruits are one of the “big 3” most auspicious fruits…