Year: 2013
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R.A. Puram, Chennai in Photos 3
This is the second part of a post describing a 90 minute “photowalk” around my new neighborhood in Chennai, India. Everything you see is within a 500 meter radius. So continuing yesterday’s story, the main destination I’d had in mind when starting this walk was yet to come. The other day I had heard drums…
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R.A. Puram, Chennai in Photos 2
This morning I decided to take my camera for another jaunt around the neighborhood in what seems to be called a “photowalk”. So I discovered today. It wound up being kind of a crazy 90 minutes or so – I came home soaking wet (sweaty) carrying a bag of jasmine and my forehead covered in…
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Driving in Chennai: Timelapse
In time-lapse photography, it’s common to keep the camera pretty still and let the subject do the moving – or if at all, to move the camera very slowly. But it can also be fun to do a moving camera time-lapse, especially when you want to convey something about the sometimes frantic (at least to…
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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…
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Impressions of Chennai: Protecting Buildings from the Evil Eye
There’s lots of construction underway in Chennai, and one thing the visitor notices early on is that larger construction sites tend to have a scarecrow-like dummy – clothing filled with straw, with a cloth head attached – strapped up somewhere prominent. If you look closer, you’ll also see a round yellow disc (in most cases),…
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R.A. Puram, Chennai in Photos
There’s something both scary and exciting when you get off a plane in a strange foreign country, knowing you’re going to spend the next two years of your life here, whether you like it or not. The first thing that hits you is the humidity. Then, all your bags collected, you head into town and…
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The Mars Reality Show Has Begun!
If you haven’t heard about the private-sector “Mars One” project to colonize Mars, you should check it out – I posted about it back in April. Â Â The project envisions being largely financed by the proceeds of a reality show to eventually beam back to Earth as the 7 billion of us who stay behind…
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Namibia: Skeleton Coast and Damaraland
Although we’ve just moved to India, waiting for our things to arrive means there’s time to finally catch up on those blog posts I didn’t have time to do while we were getting ready to leave Namibia. This is the final trip we took within Namibia, a country that is far too large to be…
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Chennai Snake Park
One of India’s few urban national parks sits in the center of Chennai. Guindy National Park, India’s 8th smallest national park, is also host to a snake park. The Chennai Snake Park Trust, founded in 1972 by American herpetologist Romulus Whitaker, is a fun place to spend a few hours and check out not only…
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Chennai: Early Impressions
Driving in Chennai can be a harrowing experience, especially for a newly-arrived foreigner. And it typically takes more than a month to get your Indian driver’s license. So when you first get here, you’re somewhat limited in your movement, and you really get a feel for how important mobility can be. It’s even worse when,…
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Southern SuburbIndia: Kolams and Cows
Every morning, all across southern India, millions of women wake up at sunrise to draw what’s known as a “kolam” at the entrance to their home. Â Kolams are geometric designs hand “drawn” by sprinkling rice flour (or in some cases other substances) on a freshly-swept and watered piece of pavement. Â I see them on my…
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Namibia: Helicopter Safari
Everyone who visits Namibia wants to go on a safari – there are game parks and private farms all over Namibia that will drive you through the bush on a 4×4 outfitted with bench seats so you can “ooh” and “aah” over the endless animals and landscape of the country. Â And of course, there’s Namibia’s…
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Boys Beware: Views on Homosexuality in 1961
For a change from the standard fare offered on YouTube, it’s fun to stop by occasionally at the Prelinger Archives, a diverse collection of thousands of preserved films from the ages, all available for download in the public domain. In addition to being interesting, the collection offers insights on changing attitudes over the years. Most…
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Silly AFN Commercials
If you’ve had the pleasure of watching the Armed Forces Network which is produced for U.S. military and many other categories of government employees serving overseas, you’ll remember those irritating commercials. After you’ve been without AFN for awhile, according to many people, the feeling you have for these commercials becomes a fondness. But this takes…
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Found film: Cowboy Outfit – Yellowstone!
One more installment in the “found film” series. This series of photos came to us via eBay from an unknown camera. The first and fourth photos feature a little girl – one posing in a cowboy (-girl) outfit, and the other is from what looks like a camping trip perhaps. They appear to be from…
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Photos from the Oregon Country Fair
Since 1969, the Oregon Country Fair has been a gathering of the wacky, existing as a three-day fair in Veneta (near Eugene) with a counterculture theme that attracts as many as 45,000 visitors. Â This year, those visitors included us. Â We had great food, met interesting people, and heard lots of great music (even buying a…
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Final Stop in the Great Western States Odyssey: Crater Lake
In our continuing Western States Odyssey in a rented 31-foot RV, our final stop was a return to the place we had originally intended to be our first stop: Crater Lake. Â Unfortunately, we had gotten a late start and ultimately decided to postpone it to the end. Crater Lake is always a special treat –…
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Scenes from Eastern Oregon
One of my favorite places in the U.S. is Eastern Oregon. Some people find the landscape boring, but I’m definitely not one of them. There are so many interesting, hidden little places to see, especially on some of the lesser-traveled roads. Abandoned buildings and barns from better days make great photography subjects. Along the Interstate,…
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Cliff Diving into the Truckee River
They say few things are as American as baseball, apple pie….and add to that “jumping into the old water hole.” As we headed west from Reno/Sparks, Nevada, the temperature climbed steadily toward the maximum it would reach that July afternoon – 109 degrees Fahrenheit. Â Just off to the right, winding alongside interstate 80, the Truckee…
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Reno and Squid Hats
…so the (teen) kids didn’t want to see the inside of a casino when we stayed overnight in Reno. Â Apparently gambling has gotten a bad rap in our family, which is not a bad thing as far as I’m concerned. Â But as parents we insisted they see Circus Circus – “just humor us”, we told…
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The City By the Bay
Marin County Coastline The latest turn in our Western States Odyssey took us into San Francisco. Â And if you’ve never had the opportunity, a great thrill ride is to take a 31-foot RV and drive it over the Golden Gate Bridge and straight through the heart of San Francisco. Â I believe if you put it…
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Really, Really Big Trees
Our continuing RV Odyssey in the Western States today took us through what botanists like to refer to as Really, Really Big Trees. The Avenue of the Giants was particularly impressive – not really captured accurately by this timelapse: It’s really not possible to capture the grandeur, scale and magnitude of these trees, some…
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More Adventures in ‘Murr’ca
Today was an eventful day in our Western States RV Odyssey. Â For those just tuning in, we are touring Oregon, California, Nevada and Idaho in a rented monstrosity of an RV, in order to satisfy a Congressionally mandated Foreign Service “home leave” (between overseas tours), and in order to avoid camping with relatives for an…
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The Great American Fast Food Odyssey – part 2
Yesterday I posted about our efforts to satisfy American fast food cravings while on “home leave” after a 2-year absence. Â And about how the menus change gradually, but how after two years the all-familiar fast food menus suddenly appear loaded with strange and unfamiliar menu items. The major shifts among the big contenders are pretty…
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The Great American Fast Food Odyssey – part 1
Foreign Service Officers (i.e. U.S. “diplomats”) are Congressionally mandated to spend a decent amount of time in the United States between tours – presumably so that we maintain a good understanding of our home countries while we’re out representing America to other countries. Â This means is that every 2-3 years, between foreign tours, we’re required…