February 24, 2003
Backwater 'Snow'
Riding through the backwaters of Kerala, we approached a settlement that looked like it was covered in localized snow. It turned out to be a primitive factory for converting the shells of tiny mussels dredged from the canal into a simple calcium-based fertilizer used in farming around the region.
The process is simple but interesting, and I'll run a series of photos on it later. This factory was probably the crudest we encountered -- the dust venting freely. The liason we travelled with gave a vague, sad remark about the deleterious health effects of breathing it regularly.
Unfortunately there are few alternatives to the basic backwater jobs of fishing, subsistence agriculture, rope making, and fertilizer baking.
(taken with 400ASA Kodak "Max" print film)
February 23, 2003
Variations... Blue Sari Baby
Used some cropping to play around with alternative versions of the original photo. I like the color and forms taken by the cropping. I also enjoy realizing that I took this picture standing over fifty feet away from this little girl, hand-holding my camera, shooting 100ASA film. It's why I love my 100-400mm lens so much...
Baby Waiting for the Ferry
Shot this photo at the ferry terminal in Fort Kochi as a crowd waited to catch the next ride to Ernakulam. I used my 100-400m Canon lens, and, for once, managed to frame the shot right the first time. The warm afternoon light and EBX film, the consumer version of Kodak E100VS (for 'Very Saturated'), gave some nice tones.
Choking Smoke
The air is thick with dust from freshly crushed gravel being mixed with asphalt heated in crudely-burning furnaces.
Baksheesh
During a morning bicycle ride through central Fort Kochi we ran into a roadworks paving site. It was as you'd expect, plenty of hard physical labour inside a cloud of asphalt smoke and gravel dust. Then, twenty steps away, some baksheesh to lubricate the project.
The full-size image is properly rotated 2-degrees back to vertical...
February 05, 2003
February 03, 2003
Admin
Hello. We're back in Singapore now. Twenty rolls of film to be sent off for developing tomorrow plus random bits of ephemera to add...
In the meantime I've fixed the scrolling bug that IE users would have been experiencing. So from the main page you should see everything; it should not be truncated in the middle of an entry.