PHOTOGRAPHY BLOG

The 2005 Mid Atlantic/East Coast group met in Williamsburg Virginia for 5 days of fellowship, collaboration, and shooting. The group covered a total of 15 different towns and cities over that period. You will see snap shots of the group at work and play in this forum thread.

Here is a picture of the four of the members having a fiesta at a local Mexican resturant(sp). From left to right Wanda Krack, TomC, Marcia, and Robert Och. It is a great time talking about the interests, families, POTY including how the votes work, and make the plans for the next day. After dinner they all went to Merchant Square in Williamsburg and practiced on night shots.

Last winter, I went backpacking in Bangladesh, and stayed for two weeks in the remote village of Panchuria. To get there I took a dilapidated bus from Dhaka for 5 hours, a ferry to cross the mighty Ganges for an hour, another bus on the other side for three hours more, then a three wheeled rickshaw for 16 kilometers, and finally a short walk across yellow fields of mustard to reach the hut of my host. I was really tired, but what a sight greeted me, and I have to share it with you. It was yellow as far as the eyes can see, with the monotony broken only by the occasional palm tree :-

Most of Bangladesh is the low laying delta of three mighty rivers originating from the Himalayas - the Ganges, the Brahmaputra (or Jamuna) and the Meghna. Every year the country is lashed by rains from the Bay of Bengal, causing massive flooding which often kill hundreds of people. But the floods deposit fertile soil on the land, and Bangladeshis harvest rice in the summer and plant mustard in the fallow season in winter. So in winter the countryside is a beautiful yellow, a little like the rape fields in temperate climes. Incidentally, that scraggly palm tree, second from the left, produces a syrup which is cooked to make brown sugar. And the palms often host wild bees which make a lovely and fragrant yelow honey from the mustard flowers.

Here is the father of my host, an imposing figure who told me he was once in the Pakistani Army serving in the North Wetern Frontier Region, during the time when Bangladesh was East Pakistan. I thought he had a very kind face, and I couldn’t imagine him pointing a gun in anger at the enemy…. Full Article.

I woke up on Saturday morning, picked up the papers and almost cried when I read the headlines -

5000 people Dead in Bam. 20,000 injured

On that Friday morning after Christmas, a massive earthquake, measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale, destroyed both the 2000 year old ancient abandoned City of Bam in S.E. Iran, as well as its 150 year old replacement city. As I write this, the death toll has risen to more than 20,000, and the injured and the maimed now exceed 40,000. It was a tragic day for the people of Bam, and I grieve deeply for them. Although I knew Bam only briefly, I have several images of Bam that I want to share with you, to show you what this calamity has destroyed, besides the human suffering, and to urge you to send a small donation to the survivors in Bam.

My pictures were shot on film with my spare EOS1X, and scanned, because I had dropped and ruined my Nikon Coolpix 990 on just the third day of my 20,000km Old Silk Road expedition. I tell you, if you are dependent on Digital like me, going back to film is quite unsettling. I felt “normal” again only after I managed to get a replacement Coolpix 995 two weeks later in Pakistan.

Bam and its surrounding villages was home to about 80,000 people, so with 60,000 dead or injured, it means three quarters of the population of Bam have directly suffered. Among the remaining one quarter, many will be wishing that they too should have died. Everyone lost someone they were close to - a son, a daughter, a father, a mother, a brother, a sister, or a friend . In many cases, entire families were wiped out…. Full Article.