Rajasthan > Jodhpur > Manvar > Kichan > Thar Desert
On the last several days of our trip, we visited the region of Rajasthan and a small village near Manvar. Here is a glimpse of village life. Beautiful children and colorful homes show us the rich lives these people lead in the Thar desert.
I love the details they adorn their homes with and the roofs made from local materials.
India’s diversity surprises you with great images. We found women beautifully dressed in bright colors, yet carrying dung on their heads for cooking and heating their homes. Ancient erotic art adorns temples. How interesting from a culture that doesn’t allow on-screen kissing in their very large and popular movie industry. Ceremonies along the Ganges, celebrate light and life with the poorest of the poor. City life and country life are expressive via the lives of the people and animals. Even a savvy street dog is found suckling from a sacred cow.
Damoiselle cranes could easily fit into the pages of my book titled Migrations. It is a never ending theme of fascination, beauty and the power of nature that arroused me once again. These beautiful graceful creatures in large numbers are an experience that I love to revisit and watch those that are witnessing this phenomenon for the first time.
After a day of seriously photographing local color, which is hugely significant in Varanasi and India as a whole, we attended an aarti ceremony during which light is offered to deities.
Art is leading a photo workshop in India for two weeks and he’s starting to send back photos! This first batch was taken on the ghats of Varanasi. It is the holiest city in Hinduism and has been a cultural and religious center for thousands of years. A ghat is a set of stairs leading to a holy body of water, in this case, the Ganges. Some are public, some private; some are used for ritual bathing or cremation, while others are used for quotidian uses such as laundry. Whatever the use, they are always a center of colorful display—even the reflections in the water are beautiful!
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It sounds odd, but I have been looking specifically for cattails lately. They make for beautiful layered shots of color and texture.
This past weekend I went out shooting with Libby and David, who orchestrate my workshops. We headed out to Washington’s Sauk River, dodged the rain squalls, and got some lovely shots.
The Sauk is a tributary of the Skagit River and drains from the Cascade Range. It has the reputation of being a great flyfishing river. It is also very, very wet.
The moss swells on the bigleaf maples and hangs in long wispy tendrils from the alders.
And then finally I found the cattails, standing tall and golden against red twig dogwood, with pale green forest beyond.
Yesterday I was feeling more stressed than usual so I decided to take a day & go and shoot in my backyard—literally and figuratively. I took off before dawn and headed toward Mt. Rainier. The mountain (volcano) was haloed in lenticular clouds at sunrise, then the light quickly flattened out into a snow sky. I then concentrated my efforts on the Carbon River, the outflow from the Carbon Glacier on Rainier. There has been a cycle of freezing and thawing this winter due to the La Nina weather pattern. The icicles are particularly interesting with their nearly iridescent grooved patterns—not unlike a shining blade of a samurai sword.
Back at home in the late afternoon, I photographed a bonsai tree in my backyard at sunset. It was a good day.
In the last week I have photographed in two very different agricultural areas of Washington State. Some may remember my earlier post on the Palouse last fall. That was such an interesting location that I decided to go back and shoot more. The old abandoned farmhouse has such a dramatically bleak appearance, especially in the severe gray tones of winter.
I followed up that outing with a drive north to the Skagit Valley, where snow geese and trumpeter swans overwinter in the farmers’ stubbly fields. We’ve experienced a glorious stretch of weather, which has been icy cold and dry with bright blue skies. During this type of weather there is always an inversion and it makes for tremendous sunsets.
I just returned from another eventful and gut-wrenching Antarctica sailing. I was one of the few not affected by seasickness in the brutal crossing of the Drake Passage.
This was a very lucky trip. We managed to dodge two major storms, one of which disabled the boat I sailed on last year. When we returned to South America, there were tours and boats backed up waiting for a break in the weather.
While waiting to embark the Ushuaia in Ushuaia, I photographed psychedelic macros of peeling paint on metal buildings and the next day we were at sea heading to Half Moon Island in the South Shetlands, and then on to the Lemaire Channel and other ice-bound islets. On one of our exploratorations off the boat I saw young Gentoo penguins play-acting nesting behavior. They were trying to “hatch” rocks and build nests.