Year: 2014
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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…
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Found Film: Korea, 1946, roll 4 (Homecoming)
This is the fourth and final installment in a series of posts about four rolls of film that were found among items acquired in an estate sale in rural Washington state. To recap what I think I can safely assume from the content in these photos, they appear to have been taken by a U.S.…
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Day at the Beach
Marina Beach, Chennai, India
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Found Film: Korea, 1946 – Part 3
This is the third installment (in what will eventually be 4) in a series of posts about a fascinating project I have been working on. Rather than the usual “found film” which I find undeveloped, this is a set of four rolls of already-developed photographs I have scanned and gradually restored over the past weeks.…
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Indian Portraits from the 1950s and 1960s
Between Chennai and Pondicherry is an area with an especially high proliferation of “junk stores. I suppose the owners would prefer we’d call them antique shops – but there actually aren’t that many actual antiques, just lots of oddities and strange treasures, many of which are made to look old. In the back of one…
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Found Film: Korea, 1946 – part 2
Last week I posted about the first of four rolls of already-developed film I had come across via a seller on eBay, and have been scanning and restoring one by one. This is the second roll, which provides a whole new set of clues as to the photographer and their living conditions in Korea, just…
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Random Scenes from Bangalore
We took a stroll through “Gandhi Bazaar” in Bangalore – also known as “Basavanagudi” – last weekend, and I thought I share some random – if occasionally odd – photos. The first photo is literally a bunch of leaves. It’s “paan” – or betel leaves. These leaves are used to wrap a mixture of substances…
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Found Film: Korea, 1946
A few months ago I came across a post on eBay where someone was selling four rolls of already-developed film. The seller professed being unsure about wanting to get rid of the film, so I offered to buy them and scan them, and restore them as much as I could, so they would be available…
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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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Found Film Friday: Yellowstone Part 4
This is the last of four posts on a big pile of found film I got recently – 13 rolls of Ektachrome slide film requiring processing using E2 and E3 chemical processes, neither of which have been available since the early 1970s. The photos were mostly in and around Yellowstone National Park; a few rolls…
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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. One of the articles that caught my attention was…
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Found Film Friday: Yellowstone part 3
This is the third week I’ve been posting from this set of 13 rolls of film, from in and near Yellowstone National Park….but 13 rolls is a lot of pictures! I know not everyone is particularly enamored with these photos – after all, anyone who has ever been to the park probably has a lot…
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Found Film Friday: Yellowstone Part 2
Last week I posted the first installment in a series of posts in which I share images from a collection of 14 rolls of Ektachrome slide film requiring an outdated chemical process, but which I decided to develop with black and white chemicals. In this set of pictures, we see the photographer’s continued photographic journey…
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Checking in with Rocky
I recently had the opportunity to meet Rocky Braat, the subject of an amazing documentary called “Blood Brother,” winner of both the Audience and Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2013. The film tells the story of a disillusioned young American who goes to India to find meaning in his life and finds it at an…
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Shooting with a 115-year-old Camera
That DSLR you bought a couple months ago – do you think it will still work in the year 2130? Sounds ridiculous? That’s basically the equivalent of taking photos with a Cycle Poco No. 3, manufactured by the Rochester Camera Company between 1893 and 1905. This one is from after 1897, because the finder on…
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Found Film Friday: Yellowstone, Part 1
I’d say “everybody has pictures from a trip to Yellowstone,” if I had ever been myself. But I have previously posted a “found film” roll that featured shots from that national park. A few weeks ago, I received 14 rolls of film I had bought – for a pretty good price, if they ended up…
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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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Kasimedu Fishing Harbor
At the northern end of Chennai’s coast, just north of the Chennai port, where, at any given time, hundreds of trucks stretch in a long line waiting to load or unload goods, is Kasimedu fishing harbor – also known as Royapuram fishing harbor, for the town section nearby. The harbor has a capacity of 575…
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Found Film Friday: Two Dim Color Rolls
With old film, conventional wisdom says it’s best to develop it in black and white chemicals, regardless whether the film was originally color film or black and white. Apparently the different colored dyes not only break down more quickly than black and white chemicals, but also at different rates. I decided to try anyway with…
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Repurposing Indian Doors
If you have an old camera or two, it looks nice on a bookshelf with a couple of hardcover books. But what do you do with 75 old cameras? Who has that many bookshelves? It seemed a shame to have them packed away out of sight, but I wondered what kind of shelves would be…
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We Two Ours One
As foreigners living in India, we constantly see things around us that leave us scratching our heads. There’s simply not enough time to chase them all down and figure out what they mean, so often we just accept them and move on, and eventually stop noticing. But every now and then, we figure one out.…
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Found Film Friday: Year Round
This week’s “found film” is the last of four rolls that were found in a storage unit in Worcester, Massachusetts. There’s not a whole lot to say about this week’s roll, other than it makes me think of how we used to take pictures, compared to how we take pictures now. This 24-picture roll…
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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…