There has always been something I find very beautiful in old black and white photographs. Perhaps it is the history that goes with them but it’s also the technical and creative aspects such as soft focus, blown out highlights, deep shadows, motion blur, visual composition and sometimes staunch expressions in the images that for me give them their wonderful charm, and the art of photography can sometimes just be in capturing a moment.

I realised lately that when I’m taking photos I always get a little obsessed with achieving technical and creative ‘perfection’, and those shots that don’t fit my usual style often get forgotten, sitting idle somewhere on a harddrive. This seems a shame as for me true beauty has never been about someones idea of visual perfection so I don’t know why I should always translate this onto my photographs. I thought that my blog would be the perfect place to showcase some of these lost shots and I have deliberately done minimal retouching on the images except to convert them to black and white..just because this is something I don’t normally do.

I’ll start with one of my favourites – father and son. More sets to follow!

Click here to comment

I couldn’t leave India without posting a little photo homage to 3 of the coolest dogs in the Himalayas – Chilli, Golden and Foxy. The family of 3 (mom, dad and son) all live in the local village but spent most of their time with us at the fishing camp next to the river while we were staying there. Obviously they realised they were on to a good thing as they got endless fuss from me and Chris as well as at least 3 good meals a day from Sharma, the best cook ever – plus chai and biscuits in between! Considering they are pretty much wild mountain dogs (they really did have free reign over the whole area, not the pampered domestic dogs we are used to at home) they had the most wonderful temperament and just relaxed next to the food tent most of the time and never once begged at the table. Every evening they would bark at any little sound, obviously warning off any wild boars or leopards potentially lurking in the fields (yes they really were around) and Foxy, despite being the lady of the pack, was always the instigator of the barking and set the other 2 off – Chris nicknamed her ‘leopard killer’ just for ironies sake because most of her barking was done from the relative safety of being under the table next to our feet!!

I really miss the dogs as they just made me smile every time I saw them trotting down the hill in the morning from the village of after they had been for a walk/swin together and I’m sure they were starting to understand English by the time I left! I have no idea what their real names are but we just named them by their looks/personality – Chilli because, being the dad and oldest of the group, is super chilled and relaxed; Golden, the youngest and the son of the family, named because he has some golden fur on him (oh yes, the originality juices were flowing that day) and he is quite energetic and sprightly despite taking a knock back when someone from the village poured boiling water over him and he had a massive sore all over one side of his body (it’s healed now don’t worry); and Foxy just because she looks a bit like a furry fox!

FAMILY PORTRAIT

CHILLI LIVING UP TO HIS NAME

FAVORITE SPOT

FOXY EXERCISING GREAT SELF CONTROL DESPITE WANTING NOTHING MORE THAN TO BE IN THAT FOOD TENT WITH THE CHICKEN CURRY!!

BISCUIT TIME WITH ME….COCONUT COOKIES WERE A HIT, BUT I GUESS ANY BISCUIT IS GOOD WHEN YOU’RE USED TO EATING SCRAPS OFF THE FLOOR!

DINNER TIME – CHILLI’S TONGUE SAYS IT ALL REALLY!

GOLDEN DOG – POLITE ENOUGH TO SIT UP FOR HIS PORTRAIT!

SKULKING AROUND

Click here to comment

Since we were spending a week or so relaxing in a lovely little town called Rishikesh which is only 24km from Haridwar, and host to the 2010 Kumbh Mela we thought we better take a visit and see what all the fuss was about since it is after all the biggest gathering of people for a religious purpose in the world!!!

I think I better give little more background info here before I go any further then the photos might make more sense! You may or may not know but India is a predominantly Hindu country with Hinduism practiced by approx 82% of the population, and with a population of over 1 billion people (and that figure was from the last census 10 years ago so who knows what the figure will at the next census in 2011) that’s a feck load of people! For Hindus, the mighty ‘Mother’ Ganges river is sacred with a spiritual significance dating back thousands of years as a life giving force of nature. Hindu mythology says that he or she who bathes in the Ganges will be rid of all sin and good Karma (as it is called) will be restored. There are 7 sacred cities in India, the first being Varanasi located on the banks of the Ganges where, if cremated at death, you will liberated from the cycle of rebirth. Haridwar is the second most sacred city in India due to the fact it is the first city that the Ganges meets after its decent from the Himalayan mountains. Every evening at sunset, thousands of Hindus can be seen on the the ghats, or steps, on the banks of the Ganges preparing to take a dip in the river and also saying pooja (prayers) or giving offering of flowers, incense and atta balls.

Kumbh Mela’s history dates back thousands of years, entwined in Hindu legend and mythology and celebrates a mythical battle between the gods and the demons for a pot (kumbh) of the nectar of immortality. The festival (mela) takes place every 4 years in a different sacred city in India and attracts literally millions of Hindu pilgrims from all over India to bathe in the River Ganges on specific dates during Kumbh Mela when the alignments of the planets are said to charge the river with enhanced electromagnetic radiations and thus special healing effects. Not only do Hindua come to bathe in the Ganges during Kumbh Mela, but many also come to visit and get blessed by their Guru (spiritual leader) who are waiting in special tented village located around the Kumbh site. I’d noticed when I arrived in Haridwar that the outskirts near the train station was literally covered with massive billboard posters of various Gurus and although the text on the majority of them were written in Hindi script I got the gist that they were basically marketing posters to advertise the presence of particular Gurus at the festival and some looked not disimilar to election posters for politicians. One poster that was written in English that made me chuckle said “Plant trees! Save the forest!” (all very well and good but your plan to do that is…?). I have seen little bits on TV about Guru’s in India and basically there are so many different religious sects of Hinduism that different groups have slightly different belief systems so there are many hundreds if not thousands of spiritual Gurus that promise to steer followers on the right spiritual ‘path’ whilst offering blessings at time of hardship and strife. Now some of these Guru’s are multi-millionaires due to the fact that their followers give them many donations of money if exchange for blessings and advise. If I am honest, I cannot help feeling slightly skeptical about this because there are more people living below the poverty line than anywhere else in the world so I would hate to think of certain dishonest people claiming themselves to be some sort of saint and thus taking advantage of people’s vulnerability for their own financial gain. Religion, in my opinion, should not be a product that can be bought and sold for the gain of one person, but a belief system that has love and humanity at it’s central core.

So with all that in mind we thought that we couldn’t be staying just 1 hour from the site of the festival without paying a visit during the penultimate bathing day. Leading up the day, Rishikesh was already starting get busier and busier with literally endless streams of pilgrims walking up and own the hill towards Riskikesh presumably to pray in the many temples within the local Lakshman Jhula and Swarg Ashram areas of town and also to find a place to sleep. When I say sleeping I don’t just mean staying in guesthouses, we saw many people sleeping and eating on the street, which was at the point I realised just how tough and hardcore the Indian people really are by putting themselves through physical hardships in name of their faith without one word of complaint, and just getting on with it – very inspiring.

We booked our Rickshaw for 5am (a time of day that seems to be existing more and more for me as I travel in India!) to take us the short journey to Haridwar and had already stocked up on mineral water as we were expecting it to be a loooooong day and we were not even sure that we would be able to find a taxi to take us the 24km back to our guesthouse so we thought we might even have to walk back! Rather than taking a dip in the Ganges (I would have felt a bit of a fraud as after all I am not a Hindu) my primary aim of the day was to document the day and particularly to witness and photograph the Naga Sadhus who come out of their spiritual centres and caves onto the road as they head to the river to bath. The Naga Sadhus are very holy men who have renounced all their worldly possessions to embark on their path to spiritual enlightenment (that is liberation from the cycle of rebirth)and wear no clothes, have long matted, often dreadlocked hair, and smear themselves with ash and can be seen doing, by any average persons estimation, some pretty crazy things. I have heard stories of Naga Sadhus eating the flesh from a dead body in Varanasi prior to cremation and also seen video clips of one Sadhu wrapping his penis around a stick and then yanking it through his legs and pulling the stick up his legs…eek!!!! So from a photographers perspective I was pretty excited about seeing this so I was keen to get to Haridwar in time to see the Sadhus walking on the road as we would not be able to get near the river itself. Basically, we had no clue what was happening and where and what time and we had been told about 6 different times as to when we may see the Naga Sadhu’s on the road on their way to bathe. We waited around for 5 hours in total but in the end didn’t get a chance to see the Sadhu’s as apparently there was a fight between them which held things up and I think in hindsight we were waiting in the wrong place anyway! It was definitely an unforgettable experience just being at Kumbh Mela and seeing so many people in one place for the same reason and there was without a doubt a sense of faith and excitement in the air. I think for me the most eye opening thing from the day was seeing an elderly pilgrim who had died on the road on his way to bathe – I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it and his body was covered in money that passers by had left and the police were ushering people on. I had my camera in my hand at the time and at first thought that it was insensitive to take a photo but then the photographer in me took over and I took a couple of shots as a document to this very interesting and unique event – apparently it is very special to die at a Kumbh Mela due to it’s spiritual significance, evident from the offerings of money around his body. This aside, I still felt (still feel actually) very different from witnessing the death of the old man, and even more so as I found out the day after that 7 more pilgrim died in a crush on a bridge on their way to bathe.

I think I would write about Kumbh all day but I will let the photos speak for themselves now as I have to go and catch a train!

All images © 2010 by Ellie Gibbons

SUNRISE AT KUMBH MELA

FECK LOADS OF PEOPLE!!

THAT’S ONE HUGE SHIVA STATUE!

PILGRIM – LOVING THE SUPER NOODLE BLANKET!!

MORNING DIP IN THE GANGES

BATHING GHAT

A YOUNG ENTREPRENUER SELLING BOTTLES FOR TAKING A LIL’ TASTE OF HOLY GANGES WATER HOME

INDIA’S MOST ‘FAMOUS’ GURU AND YOGA MASTER: BABA RAMDEV

A MOMENT OF CONTEMPLATION AMOUNGST THE MILLIONS – I ESPECIALLY LOVE HIS RAJASTHANI STYLE ‘SAFA’

SOUL SISTERS

GURU MARKETING ON A BALLOON – GENIUS!!

OMG – THIS GUY LOOKS SO COOL!!!!!

Click here to comment

Making full use of the WiFi connection in my hotel roomin Jaipur, I thought I’d post these images I shot while my boyf and his mate were busy fishing. Using the light from a nearby temple next to the riverbank which is lit up after dark, I set a long shutter speed on my camera and played around with zoom and movement. I really like the trippy, futuristic effect of the shots…I even think a couple of them look like jelly fish, which turned out to be the only fish that was caught that evening!!

Click here to comment

I can’t believe that I have been in India nearly two months already – this is quite significant for me as my longest stay here so far is 6 weeks so now that I have exceeded that it feels quite special and I am starting to see new sides to India everyday that I am here. There is so much to say on the trip so far so I think I will keep these entries mainly photography focused so as to keep me on track! The main thing I have to say on taking photographs in India is this: PEOPLE. Lots of them. 1,139,964,932 to be exact. This is great because for me people are the best subject for photographs because I just love trying to capture an expression that says more about a person’s character rather than recreating the horrible, cheesy posed shots we see all to often. Also, the people are a massive part of what makes India such an inspiring and unique country. But, photographing people here does hold other challenges for the active travel photographer such as myself, namely that it attracts far too much attention! I stand out on the streets anyway, being relatively quite tall and white skinned but once I get that camera out I’m hard pressed to blend in with the crowd at all. I’ve made the mistake more than once now of shooting portraits too early on when I take the camera for a walk, and then showing the person their image on the back of the camera..GAME OVER!! Seemingly from nowhere about 20 other people (children and more surprisingly, adults) appear and they all want their photo taken in various group combinations, and with shouts of “me photo!” repeating in my ear, I end with with very few of the images I set out to get in the first place.

I am wisening up now though and realise you have to be pretty hardnosed and tough at times to be a successful travel photographer, especially as some of men here have a unnerving habit of just shouting or whistling at me. My technique is now basically click and move. I’ve been making good use of a usually quite redundant telephoto lens (I have a lightweight 90-300mm Canon Ultrasonic) to stand back and keep as much to myself as possible at first to watch and observe while I take a few sneaky snots – obviously being rude is never on my agenda so if someone sees me with the camera pointing at them then I just generally point at my camera, make the OK sign and waggle my head Indian style (I picked this up very quickly, it’s very useful for communicating!_ and they seem happy enough to have their photo taken. I then move on quickly and try not to stay in one place too long. I love the effect of these observed shots, almost like a window onto a new world. I do like to think of myself as a social young thing and interacting with my surrounding and the people is one of the great things about photography but I must say there is something very peaceful about just trying to blend in, watch, and take photos, especially in Indian cities when things are just plain crazy! When I have some shots that I’m happy with I then click on a shorter focal length lens and get closer to the action. I’m loving my Tamron 28-75mm f.2.8 for portraits at the moments as the images are near on pin sharp and the wide aperture gives a great shallow depth of field that I just can’t achieve with my wide lens, a Canon 17-85mm f4 – 5.6 (which is pretty useful as a general walkaround lens though when I cant carry much kit with me). As I know I already have some great shots and made use of the ‘good light’ (super important, as any photographer will tell you) then it doesn’t matter so much if I spend a little bit of time clicking a few token kid/adult group shots while I try and get some portfolio worthy images along the way.

So far I have photographed in a few places in India, mainly Almora in the Himalayan foothills and Jaipur, Rajasthan so far and all the best photos from my trip this year are displayed in the portfolio section of my website in a new gallery called (believe it or not) ‘Travels 2010′. Any ‘not necessarily for portfolio but still worthy of a look’ photos I will post here on my blog like the photo of a poster my boyfriend spotted today in a textiles shop in Jaipur which made me smile and I think sums India up completely – traditional meets the modern world! Plus it reminds me of the humourous angle I sometimes like to take in my own photographs

Click here to comment