Ganges

A mother and daughter walk towards the edge of the river Ganges with their shared offering.

With so much happening as part of the daily ritual of bathing in the river, I found it easy to be part of it, without attracting too much attention to those who were focused on their worship.

Each time I come home from a trip, there are certain images burned into my mind, and this is one of them. I guess it was the shared act, their hands cusping the offering and the fact that I was standing right behind them - able to capture what they were doing before the flowers had been set down on the water.

Pushkar Portrait #2

Well I did say I was going to be away this week, but as usual, my plans changed. So while I'm stuck at my computer today, I thought I'd upload this portrait.

Shot in Pushkar, a sacred city in Rajasthan, in January of this year, I made a black and white print of it this week which I felt was very beautiful. So this spurred me onto loading the negative into my trusty Coolscan 9000 to see what it looked like in colour. It was a complete shock to see all those vibrant colours in the lady's clothing. Such a different interpretation from a black and white print. If I can manage it at some point, I'd love to scan the black and white print - there's hints of silver in the highlights which I feel are not possible with inkjet prints.

I feel I'm moving into the realms of traditional black and white printing. There's something organic about this process and many friends who have seen the results so far have commented that there's 'something special about a real black and white print'. I agree.

Shot on 645 Contax with 80mm lens at f4, it has a nice shalow depth of field - the background is nicely isolated. I love Portra film, it does tend to have a warm tone to it - slightly reddish, but hey - that's the beauty of film, each one has its own character and it would be folly to fight it.

Sadhu

I'm going to be going off the radar for the next week or so. Heading back up north to Skye to do some research for some future workshops for my business, but in the meantime, thought I'd leave you all with one of the new images I've been working on.

Shot in Jaisamler in Rajasthan, earlier this year. I took this with a Contax 645 and standard lens shot at f2. Sadhus are holly men, but I often felt that they had become so used to generating a nice income from the local tourist trade. I will put it another way, often I didn't have to approach Sadhu's for pictures, rather they would approach me whether I wanted to take their photo or not.

But they do make excellent subjects. I had made some more black and white contact sheets today and this shot was just so gorgeous I had to make a large black and white print of it. I had no idea just how it looked in colour until I chose the same negative to scan when I got back to my home.

I feel I've hit the tip of the iceberg in terms of potential images. Somehow, I think I needed time away from these images when I got home from India. The entire trip was so overwhelming. Space, a little bit of distance and all of a sudden I'm ready to take the task of working on 100 rolls of film on board. I feel very wary - I've got to becareful I don't rush, as I may pass an image which has great potential. I think it's just going to take a lot of time.

Taj Mahal Portfolio

I've just put my images from the Taj Mahal up on my main portfolio page. Some of you may have seen the Taj Mahal podcast I have, but it's always nice to see the images on screen outside of a podcast because they are not compromised by the conversion to video.

It was an interesting portolio to work on. Sometimes you go to a place with great expectations and I certainly thought I would come away with some great sunrise shots. But the smog in Agra is choking, and I was not prepared for zero vilibility. Still, I'm very satisifed with these images - some are abstract, having taken advantage of the smog to isolate objects and people. I also like the muted tones from shooting in such (artificial) soft light.

Podcast : India's Taj Mahal

I've not even begun to work on my Indian images yet. But along while back, sometime in February when I got home, I started to collate all the usable images from my visits to the Taj Mahal.

Please click on the image to play the podcast

It's quite an incredible landmark and it didn't disappoint me. Photographically however, I was restricted : they won't let you in with a tripod or any recording devices. Still, I did manage to smuggle an audio recorder past the entrance gates. So in this podcast, you can hear ambience from the surrounding gardens. It's hard for me to explain, but it was just so calming to be there, despite the fact that I was there with 1000 other people at 6am in terrible smog.

My throat and lungs ached after spending a couple of hours there. So bad was the pollution.

However, the Taj Mahal is simply one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen. It did not disappoint.

I went perhaps three or four times, and the last time was enough for me. Going in the evening is the worst because everyone, and I mean everyone, is there. It was like Disney Land. Terrible. It's also a shame that the gardeners are onto touting the tourists too. After spending weeks being harassed by threatening touts, I thought I was going to get some peace in the gardens. So I was pretty frustrated when I had to tell the gardeners to leave me alone in peace.

I think the Taj Mahal has to be enjoyed in silence, with time to reflect, it's a beautiful special place, more so because it is a reprieve from the madness of India.

You cannot rush

I've just started work on some images from the gardens around the Taj Mahal. I knew when I was there, roaming the gardens in the industrial smog that was shrouding the entire complex, that I would have to be very, very careful with how I edit and work on these. I tend to go for saturated images and contrast. A punchy image. But these ones are begging to be left alone, or more to the point, desaturated, left to be misty and vague.

It's early days yet, but I feel that what I've got together from my velvia shots alone is coming together nicely. I have a large light table at home now, which means that I can lay out all the images that make some kind of impact on me. Once they're all there on the same table, with the light illuminating them from the back, I'm able to see more clearly the 'story' of what will come.

It's hard to describe, but I don't think I work with the intention of working on each image as a sole entity. It's the bigger picture I'm after. Does the entire collection of images I have fit together? Do they compliment, do they share the same tonal aspects?

This is when I can get brutal. I believe in quality control. I start by cutting my films down to what I think is good, and then I cut them down even further to the ones that I know don't niggle me in any way, or perhaps, I know they have faults, but I'm happy with them all the same. There's something pleasing in their imperfection.

Anyway, I digress. I'm working on them, but I think it's a delicate process. You cannot rush the birth of your creativity. It has to come to you at the right time, and that's not just when you decide to click the shutter. There are many stages to the birth of an image, and in this stage, I'm talking about how I decide to edit and how I decide to put my story together.

I'm off to the Isle of Eigg this week and then into a glen, to a friends cottage. So It's going to be a while before I have anything concrete to show, and even then, I'd prefer to sit with them for a while, live with my results, get used to them before I decide to share. I'm sorry, but this is perhaps the most precious stage of photography for me. I've got to know I did my best, and I've not stopped half way on an image.

Peeling under the layers

Well I'm back from India and Nepal, as of yesterday and apart from feeling the jet lag, it is now only possible for me to really understand where I have been and what I have seen. You see, I feel like a chameleon when I go traveling. Things are fresh and new.... for a while and quickly what was special becomes my new norm. My normal point of reference. Home starts to feel like a dream and I'm quickly immersed in my new surroundings so much so that I loose a sense of perspective. It is only once I am home and have adjusted to my cultural background that I am able to take stock of how culturally rich and strange the places I have been to are.

I met up with David DuChemin from the PixelatedImage whilst in Kathmandu. I was unfortunately fatigued and unwell, but we had a good chat about photography and it was really nice to meet him in person. I feel that David is someone we will be seeing a lot of in the future. He has drive and vision.

So I now have 99 rolls of film (I counted them this morning at 3am) to get processed. What can I tell you of the trip? Or the photos in particular? Well I think India was overwhelming in so many ways and I often felt that I needed to escape. Noise noise noise. People people people. Portraits portraits portraits. Yes, I think I'll perhaps have a new portfolio titled 'portraits of Rathjestan' but also a portfolio dedicated to the Taj Mahal.

I fell in love when I least expected to. Arriving at the Taj gates at 5am for sunrise to find I was one of a few thousand sunrise visitors, I felt that I would get nothing, and perhaps I should resign my camera to my bag. But the building was simply stunning and I'm not usually one for the normal tourist adverts. I'm unclear at this moment whether it was the Agra smog, eating away at the marble of the building and shrouding it in a ghostly fog that made it more special, or if it was simply a case of enjoying something with symmetry and order after three weeks of dust, dirt, grime, poverty you wouldn't believe and maddening chaos. Perhaps this did enhance my response to the vision of the Taj, but I went back three mornings to shoot there and now feel convinced that in those unprocessed films, I have the germs of a seperate portfolio.

I guess I love that about film. I slowly build up a mental picture, or perhaps more an emotional picture in my head of what the final results will be like. I often get a feeling when an image comes 'right' in the camera. Often at the point of tripping the shutter, and yet, nothing ever prepares me for the processed images when they land on my desk.

So what now? Well, apart from some sleep, and some decent food for a change, I need to get prepared for a workshop I am doing in Patagonia in around six weeks time. I'm also going to do the full Paine circuit while there - something I have yet to do in an attempt to get some photos from the highest pass in the park - the John Gardiner pass, which has panoramic views over the southern ice field (wish me luck).

But I also have a trip to Easter Island and this is really what the title of this post is all about. I've been to Easter Island before - around six years ago and I came home spell bound by the place. I knew then that I had only scratched the surface of the Island and I've had an itch to go back for a long time. I do feel that you often need to repeat a visit to a location. It's not always immediately 'understood' and it can take time to truly understand a landscape to get the best out of it. So I hope that this trip to Easter Island allows me to peel perhaps one or two layers away.

I'll sign off just now. Off to make a cup of tea and get those films processed. Expect to see some blog activity in the coming weeks regarding my Indian and Nepal photos.