29 Sunday Oct 2017
Posted in Uncategorized
I go to India to get out of my comfort zone and relish the culture shock that comes from a surprise round every corner – and the take masses of photos. Take a look at some of the funnier (as opposed to simply jaw-dropping) surprises I’ve encountered: Yearning for Creative Stress© in Incredbial India
29 Sunday Oct 2017
Posted in culture, culture shock, India, photography, Travel
Tags
creative stress, culture, Delhi, guru, incredible india, India, misunderstandings, photography, travel
I’m going to India again. Why India? I go there several times a year and my friends and other people often ask me why. I pay my own way, so this isn’t some all-expenses-paid press junket. It’s usually not for a holiday, either. I love going to India, but it’s not a place in which I can honestly say I normally go to relax (although I hasten to add that there are places where this is more than perfectly possible).
So why the hell do I love going there? First of all, there is the incredible (did I spell that right?) visual variety, a feast for any obsessive photographer and writer such as myself, and the surprises that seem to wait around every corner. And it keeps you on your toes to discover, again and again, that a taxi driver might actually mean “No” when he says “Yes”, as in: “So you know this address, right?” “Yes, sir.” So why is he driving the wrong way (and sometimes against oncoming traffic) for half an hour, then calling his mate for directions? To describe just one example, familiar to many people almost as soon as they get off the plane at Delhi, bleary-eyed and gullible.
I am of the old fashioned, slightly perverse school of travel that says it’s fun and life-enhancing to be removed from your comfort zone. India does comfort zone-removal better than anywhere, unless you happen to be Indian, in which case it’s just normal. Arriving from Europe, you have to take a mental shift sideways or fight against the cultural flow. Either way, you are enriching your soul. In any case, that’s what I keep telling myself. In fact, I’ve just invented a name for it: Creative Stress©. Watch out for the self-help manual.
In India there seems to be a guru for everyone for every day of the week. I’ve been consulting my blog guru lately and I’ve been advised to inject some humour into these blogs. I have a lot of very good friends in India and I think – I hope – they won’t be offended if I tease them a bit with this selection of photos that illustrate some of the more amusing visual culture shocks I have encountered during my visits. If they want to get their revenge they only have to remember that I’m British, and these days that’s about as ridiculous as you can be.
And just to cover my tracks, I have to mention that Indian hospitality is of the first order. Indian friends are for life, not just for Diwali. So I keep returning happily to see them as well.
Spotted in The Times of India, Mumbai edition, I’m not sure this needs any comment. I think all of us condemn bum blasts in public places.
No, I don’t know what a Dliabetologist is either. Probably someone who treats ‘dliabetes’. Meanwhile, form a queue to put your mind at rest with Assistant Professor B. Shit.
Those well-fermented drinks are collector’s items that date back to the days of the 16th century Mughal Empire.
The slogan of the Indian Tourism Board is widely promoted by auto-rickshaw drivers. I think this sums it up. All my memories of Idnia are of incredbial experiences..
On the border with Pakistan at Wagah, near Amritsar, I witnessed the surreal evening border-closing ceremony, at which the Indian army demonstrates its considerable sonic warfare capabilities. I kid you not.
This guy’s tee-shirt is all the more alarming for the fact that he was wearing it at the site of the shrine of the Sufi Muslim saint, Nizamuddin, in Delhi. Sufis are known for the gentle, music-loving, celebratory nature of their brand of Islam. Either this fellow didn’t know the meaning of the slogan or he actually really did know I was going to be there. Probably the latter.
Lots more photos from all over India here, although not all as irreverent as those above:
https://timbirdphotography.photoshelter.com/gallery/India/G0000irlXmGr5Dyg/
Come and see me on Instagram too at @tim_bird_photo
18 Wednesday Oct 2017
Posted in Uncategorized
What would you shoot if you could only take one picture? What have you always wanted to photograph?
Source: Six Images: Six photos to check from the bucket-list
18 Wednesday Oct 2017
Posted in bucket-list, travel photography, Uncategorized
Tags
aurora, Baltic, Bandhavgarh, bucket-list, finland, himalayas, India, mountains, northern lights, Stromboli, Taj Mahal, tigers, travel, travel photography, volcano
There are certain things you simply have to get shots of. As a travel photographer you can never exhaust the photographic possibilities of the world around you, whether it’s the people or the places or the natural phenomena. I know I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to tick off quite a few items on my photo bucket list. On the other hand, if you don’t go looking for those opportunities they’re not going to fall into your lap. So luck is only part of the story. You need to be at least a little bit adventurous and resourceful.
Here are six images of things I really wanted to photograph and managed to. Some of them, like the Northern Lights, I could happily photograph daily – or nightly – if I had the chance. But then I wouldn’t have time to shoot all the other amazing people and things I see on my travels.
Walking on water: I live in Finland and large parts of the Baltic Sea freeze every winter, although climate change is affecting the extent to which ice forms. But it’s still possible to walk on water – an enthralling experience. I shot this during a cruise on the Sampo icebreaker, converted to tourist use from the north-west port of Kemi.
http://www.visitkemi.fi/en/sampo
2. An erupting volcano: Shooting an active volcano has always been an ambition. I went through a period of travelling throughout Central America peering into dramatically smoking craters, even glimpsing red hot lava just a few metres away. But I didn’t see a properly erupting volcano until I went to Sicily and the island of Stromboli, probably the most frequently and visibly active volcano in Europe. When I was there the lava spewed out every 20 minutes or so. This was shot from a ledge about half a kilometre from the eruption. Less intrepid volcano-watchers have the option of viewing more distantly but very comfortably from the terrace of a pizzeria further down! Or like my even more intrepid companion, trek for several hours almost right to the rim of the thing, where shooting has to be done at far greater speed.
3. Wild tigers in India: The first time I tried this, I got one shot of a tiger’s head emerging from the bush and another of its tail disappearing into the undergrowth on the opposite side of the track! My second visit to the Bandhavgarh tiger reserve in the state of Madhya Pradesh was much more fruitful. This little family (minus Dad) came strolling along the track towards our jeep and passed within a few feet of us. A breath-holding moment.
Thanks to my hosts at http://junglemantrasafaris.com/ for helping me on this one.
4. The Taj Mahal: This extraordinary building has a lot of hype to live up to as India’s most famous tourist destination – but it succeeds. It really is magnificent. It also is really crowded during the daytime, so get up early (getting up early is an essential thing for photographers to do if they want to get the most interesting light) and head across to the other side of the river just before sunrise. When I did this I was rewarded with this wonderful view of the marble domes wrapped in mist. The night before I had seen it in moonlight. Go out at different times, see the same places in a different light…
5. The Northern Lights: The aurora borealis is without question – in my view at least – the most magical, transfixing and addictive spectacle on the planet. It reduces me to blubbering infancy every time. You can’t just see the Northern Lights once, you have to keep trying to see it again once you’ve seen it. It casts a spell. I still haven’t got what I think is the perfect shot and the alerts I have on my phone frustratingly let me know that activity is sometimes strong – even when the sky is covered in cloud! This shot was from a lakeside near Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland, almost bang on the Arctic Circle. Note the reflections on the water – this was taken in September before the lake was frozen and snow-covered. So you don’t need freezing temperatures but you do need clear skies.
6. The Himalayan Mountains: This dawn shot of Kanchenjunga, the summit of which is in Nepal, was from Darjeeling in India. I love mountains, all the more for their rarity in Finland where I live! I remember waking in a village in Nepal on the Annapurna trail and parting the shutters on my guesthouse window and seeing the Annapurna range in this kind of light, shaking my room mate awake and telling him: “Juha, you have to see this!” Is there anyone who cannot be humbled and awestruck by a view of mountains?
That is my bucket list shortlist. If you have enjoyed this visit (and thanks for dropping by), do come again, and feel free to share, but contact me if you have something commercial in mind – copyright for all photos is mine, all mine. If you’d like to find out more about me and my photography, visit my website at www.timbirdphotography.com
I am also in Instagram at @tim_bird_photo
and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/timbirdtravelphoto/
10 Tuesday Oct 2017
Posted in Uncategorized
New blog introduces my multimedia documentary about a village in India: Source: Six images: Outcastes revisited – a village in India
10 Tuesday Oct 2017
Posted in India, Odisha, photography, rural India, sustainable development, travel photography, Uncategorized
Tags
artisans, caste system, dalits, handicrafts, India, multimedia, Odisha, orissa, village life
A couple of years ago, with the help of my friend Finnish photographer and expert on all-things-multimedia Kari Kuukka I published Outcastes – a Village in Odisha, India, an experimental multimedia documentary about a Dalit community – or rather Kari did, on his innovative multimedia site DocImages.fi. The village in question is the target of work, especially for organising women artisans, carried out by Tikau Share, a Finnish NGO of which I am a member. I’m still really proud of the documentary, even if it is a bit rough round the edges. So every now and then I bring it back to life. You can download and view it here – please do!
Pictures below are some of the stills in the package which also includes video, some less-than-slick time-lapses, some amazing 360 panoramas showing the village and house interiors, and narrative text.
Where the world ends on the horizon
The distant low rumble of a train drifts across the flat rice fields, its horn scaring away the occasional cow and dispersing the women using the railway line as a short cut back from market. The sun has risen to a punishing height and most of the villagers are huddled in the shaded porches of their mud and straw houses, breathing life into their fires or stirring rice.
The boys take a break from their cricket game and a group of girls are giggling by the water pump. At the back of the village, just-washed saris flap in the breeze, vivid flags of mauve and orange. A cow saunters into view, flicking its tail at a spiral of flies, oblivious to the stacks of its own dung left drying in the sun for fuel. A chicken pecks fussily at the ground and a baby starts to cry inside one of the windowless houses.
Out on the flat plains of northern Odisha, the world ends on the horizon. The soaring tower blocks of Delhi, the call centres and high-tech offices of Bangalore and the glitter and honking taxis of Mumbai might as well be on another planet.
The village architecture of mud walls on mud platforms, crowned with tussled roofs of straw that gets washed away with each torrential monsoon, has not changed for decades, perhaps even centuries. Nor have the daily concerns, of earning enough to buy rice for the next meal, of weaving baskets for the market, of heading out to the fields to defecate.
Isolated economically and socially, this Dalit village is not unique. Odisha, like other Indian states, remains home to the impoverished and the underprivileged. The Dalits, at the bottom of the caste system, still suffer discrimination and a social stigma from other sectors of India’s vast and complex society.
I can call these people my friends. Tim Sir is the man with the camera, which no longer makes them scared or nervous. I observe their lives, they laugh at the photos I produce of them. I sit on their mud floors and listen to their stories. During my visits I am briefly humbled by their lifestyle. And I return to the comforts of my western existence, the petty stresses of which are unknown to them.
If you like what you have seen, do come back and browse my back pages, and look out for future posts. Feedback and comments also welcome!
05 Thursday Oct 2017
Posted in Uncategorized
Did you miss World Animals day?
Who knew it? October 4 is World Animals’ Day! Time to feel the beast in you.
The official World Animal Day website states its aim as “To raise the status of animals in order to improve welfare standards around the globe. Building the celebration of World Animals’ Day unites the animal welfare movement, mobilising it into a global force to make the world a better place for all animals. It’s celebrated in different ways in every country, irrespective of nationality, religion, faith or political ideology. Through increased awareness and education we can create a world where animals are always recognised as sentient beings and full regard is always paid to their welfare.”
It seems like an event worth marking in photo form, so here are six photos from some of the unforgettable close encounters I’ve had with various wildlife in recent years. I’m not a wildlife photographer as such –…
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03 Tuesday Oct 2017
Posted in Uncategorized
03 Tuesday Oct 2017
Posted in Central America, Costa Rica, Finland, India, Mexico, namibia, nature, photography, Travel, travel photography, Uncategorized, wildlife
Tags
animals, Bandhavgarh, brown bears, conservation, Costa Rica, crocodiles, finland, India, kuhmo, Mexico, Monarch butterflies, namibia, natural environment, whales, wildlife, world animals' day
Who knew it? October 4 is World Animals’ Day! Time to feel the beast in you.
The official World Animal Day website states its aim as “To raise the status of animals in order to improve welfare standards around the globe. Building the celebration of World Animals’ Day unites the animal welfare movement, mobilising it into a global force to make the world a better place for all animals. It’s celebrated in different ways in every country, irrespective of nationality, religion, faith or political ideology. Through increased awareness and education we can create a world where animals are always recognised as sentient beings and full regard is always paid to their welfare.”
It seems like an event worth marking in photo form, so here are six photos from some of the unforgettable close encounters I’ve had with various wildlife in recent years. I’m not a wildlife photographer as such – I probably don’t have the required patience – but I have still been lucky enough to photograph animals in many special locations.
More observant readers will notice that there are in fact seven images here, not six. Sorry about that. It might happen again.
Brown bears sound each other out in a summer storm in eastern Finland. There are a number of hides along the border between Finland and Russia where you can watch brown bears through the summer night. This time I was hosted by the Boreal Wildlife Centre near Kuhmo in Kainuu, right up on the northeast of Finland.
Crocodiles, Costa Rica. This shot is from a famous bridge on one of the main highways crossing the country and spanning the Tarcoles River. Like much wildlife in Costa Rica, the crocs are easy to spot, sometimes dozens of them, basking in the mud beneath the bridge.
Monarch butterflies, El Rosario, Angangueo, Mexico. This reserve is in the hills above the otherwise unexciting town of Angangueo, about four hours from Mexico City, to which millions of Monarch butterflies make their way each winter, migrating from the mountains of northwest America. I got to the forest before anyone else early in the morning and watched the wings of the insects warm and open as the sun rose. Truly extraordinary.
Grey whale, Baja California, Mexico. I timed my trip to Mexico to be able to see both the butterflies (above) and the grey whales that congregate here to mate before heading back north. I can still barely believe that I saw these enormous animals. Rather than breaching, grey whales pop their heads above water and rotate their heads like periscopes. They are very curious and once they realised that myself and my two companions in a small boat were not a threat, they started to emerge, dozens of them in all directions. It was hard to know which way to look.
Cape fur seal, Cape Cross seal colony, Namibia. I left the group of journalists I was with for half a day to take a private trip up to Cape Cross, and I could smell the vast colony and hear their calls before I saw them, hundreds of them, spread across the rocks and spilling into the South Atlantic. The saddest thing was spotting the pups separated from their mothers and being instructed by the warden that it was against the rules to try to pair them up – nature must take its own course.
A green lizard, Tortuguero swamps, Costa Rica. Tortuguero is on a waterway running parallel to the Caribbean coast. All sorts of wildlife, including sloths, iguanas, snakes and brightly coloured tree frogs can be spotted on early morning boat ‘safaris’. A magical place.
A mother tiger and cubs, Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh, India. This little family, minus father, came strolling along the forest track by surprise, obligingly passing my jeep within just a couple of metres. My pulse shoots up when I look at these photos. My base was the very accommodating, friendly and knowledgeable Jungle Mantra Resort – recommended.
These images are the tip of my photographic iceberg, much of it stored on my website at www.timbirdphotography.com. Watch out for my Instagrams at @tim_bird_photo, Tweets at https://twitter.com/BirdTimothy and Facebook stuff at https://www.facebook.com/timbirdtravelphoto/
Thanks for dropping in. Please share and do visit again!
