Erg Chebbi at Dusk

Morocco’s Great Sand Sea at Dusk…a Unique Landscape

See www.adventureswithali.com for your visit to the Erg Chebbi.

Dusk on the last day of Ramadan

Tchit, Mauritania 2005

Although once Tchit was a thriving community on the silk road now it is an isolated village of several hundred people. We were there on the night that Ramadan ended and the entire populace hurried to join in the dancing and drumming which is how they celebrate a joyous occasion.

Prayer for Harvest

Quinghai, Province, China 2007

Stylized photograph of Tibetan girl in traditional costume. Tibetan writing superimposed in Photoshop.

Come to Mama

Bokhara, Uzbekistan 2012

A vendor stoops to pick out the best melon for her customer.

Visit Uzbekistan on a www.uzbekjourneys.com tour.

Rush Hour Delhi

There must have been hundreds of these little taxis. I needed to be up high for a good shot, but all I had was the curb.

Red and Blue

The Indian Market, Rangoon Burma 2011

Long slices of ripe watermelon lay next to rows of sugar cane. Sweet snacks for hot humid summer days.

The sugar cane was nearly a black color. The red of the melon and the black of the cane compelled me to take a couple of shots. But although it looked gorgeous in the viewfinder and on the LCD screen, some of the magic was missing when I got it on my computer. I enhanced it a bit, saturating colors and blurring the entire photo to give an abstract feel. Then I rotated the canvas and put the right side on the bottom, making a vertical out of a horizontal shot.

I’ll be away from home for two weeks or so. I’m going to Arizona and Utah to photograph some landscapes and cliff dwellings, once the home of ancient American Indians. I’m looking forward to showing you those.

The Mother

Northern Togo 2001

A woman with her children close beside her sells in the market place. Her baby lies contentedly on her back and her daughter sits ready to help the minute the mother speaks. I can see from the daughter’s sweet expression, that her mother has “raised her right” as we used to say in South Carolina.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Village Kitchen

Burma, a village on the banks of the Irrawaddy River. 2011

 A woman boils water for drinking. I can’t think that she does much else in that huge pot. And she has her thermos ready and waiting there on the left in the picture. People in many Asian countries, including China, must boil their drinking water. She sits on a charpoy and waits for the water to boil. Now she is in the twilight of her life, she can lapse into thought as she waits. There are no babies to tend now. How many hours, days, weeks or months of her life has she spent waiting for water to boil?

Life in Paradise

An elderly man enjoys a nap. This is his home, a bamboo hut open to the sultry, warm air. When the monsoon comes, he moves his bed to another corner, but it was hot that day and he wanted to enjoy the breeze from the river. No doubt he deserves his rest, having farmed or fished all of his life. It is likely he still does farm or fish. Where else would he get the food for himself and his family? There are no entitlements in Burma. He does have something an entitlement will never confer… he has the self-worth that comes from doing an honest day’s work.

Peasant with Basket

Yunnan Province, China 2005

A Chinese farmer heads home for the day. He carries a typical basket on his back. Farmers don’t leave home without it. They carry their tools in it, throw the harvested crop in it and maybe even put the baby in it if the farmer is a mother.  I’ve often wondered what people like this man think as they work their farms. Do they enjoy being in the fresh air, smelling the freshly turned earth, the tangy scent of vegetation when the dew rises? Or is it all hustle, hustle, hustle?  I admire farmers no matter where they live, hard working, no-nonsense people. You know where you stand with them.

Manpower

There is no such thing as a small town in China, even this one somewhere in the hinterlands of Yunnan, had millions of inhabitants. There were two main roads lined with commercial property. Most were small shops selling food, tools, seeds or they were small restaurants where you could get a delicious bowl of noodles for pennies. Men and women from the countryside hunkered down on the corner to people watch or traffic watch. It was odd to see people squatting as if they were back in their farmyard, oblivious to pedestrians swarming around them.

I was standing on the corner myself trying to get some shots while I waited for our group to finish breakfast.  I have no advice for this type of shooting…just have the camera settings right. I check the ISO, shutter speed or aperture depending on what I’m shooting. I leave my white balance on automatic since I shoot RAW. After that, a lot of it depends on who comes down the street.

At the Truck Stop

India: on route to Agra or maybe it was somewhere else…2004

It’s rare to see buskers like these with their ‘pet’ animals. I’m guessing they are gypsy men as keeping ‘dancing’ bears used to be common among gypsies where ever they might live. When countries join the EU, keeping dancing bears is outlawed.  The gypsies, if they want to continue this line of work,  are forced to get a monkey like the man on the right in the photo.

This is a sloth bear and is found all over India. It is noted for its long white muzzle (good for eating termites) and its short hind legs. Poor thing! I feel sorry for it. But it didn’t ‘dance’ and so maybe it doesn’t have too hard a life. (To make bears dance, the gypsies used to make them stand on hot coals or maybe burn their feet with lit cigarettes. )

I was excited to see the men with their animals. It seemed that the past had come alive even if we were stopped on a busy highway for a document check. I gave the photo a retro look. One way to do that is to use a white vignette and use a pink/orange filter in Photoshop.

The bear’s face was in shadow and it wasn’t completly clear what kind of animal it was. In order to emphasize that the bear was a bear I darkened the areas behind its muzzle and lightened the muzzle. The contrast of light and dark brings out the shape of the bear’s head. Now even a cursory glance tells us that this is a bear.