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Yearning for Creative Stress© in Incredbial India

29 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by Tim Bird in culture, culture shock, India, photography, Travel

≈ 3 Comments

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.

indosigns_2629

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.

indosigns-2

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.

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Those well-fermented drinks are collector’s items that date back to the days of the 16th century Mughal Empire.

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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..

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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.

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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

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Six Picks: the Cathedral of Tampere in central Finland

26 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by Tim Bird in architecture, art, culture, travel photography

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Cathedral, finland, helsinki, Hugo Simberg, Hvitträsk, Jugendstil, Lars Sonck, National Romantic, Tampere

A regular themed photo blog selected from images either in or on their into my website archive at www.timbirdphotography.com

I just paid a flying visit to Tampere, a city on the confluence of two big lakes in central Finland, and dropped in to what is one of my favourite buildings in the whole country, the city’s cathedral. It was designed by Lars Sonck, a prime exponent of the Finnish National Romantic architectural style at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, a kind of cultural expression of national identity when Finland was still governed as a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire.

Much of the best and most distinctive architecture and art in Finland dates to this period; the National Museum and National Theatre in Helsinki are other examples, as is Hvitträsk, a wonderful lakeside Tolkienesque fantasy in wood and granite close to the capital, the former home and collective studio-cum-drinking den of three architects, Gesellius, Lindgren and Saarinen, and now a museum. The cathedral’s materials of wood and granite, as well as evocative symbolic frescoes, paintings and stained glass, are typical of what I think is a very appealing style.

Tampere Cathedral contradicts the idea that all Lutheran churches are restrained and sombre. In fact when it opened in 1907 the cathedral was controversial with worshippers who wondered, for example, why a symbol of the devil, a snake fresco, was featured in its interior.

Here, then, are six picks from my visit.

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Tampere Cathedral – straight out of Tolkien. Greatness in granite.

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The ceiling of the Cathedral bears the image of a snake by Hugo Simberg.

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View towards the altar, showing the vaulted ceilings, a kind of romantic Gothic, with the altarpiece and stained glass window designed by Magnus Enckell.

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The Burning Bush is one of six stained glass windows by Hugo Simberg.

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Twelve boys hold the Garland of Life, a fresco running around the gallery, painted by Simberg.

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The main door of the Cathedral. You can see many heavy wooden doors and whimsical granite arches like this in the Jugendstil districts of Helsinki, such as Katajanokka and Eira.

 

 

If you’ve enjoyed this glimpse of my photography, please follow and come back for more next time, as well as Tweet, Hoot, Shout and Share. And do visit my website at www.timbirdphotography.com

http://visittampere.fi/

Read an essay by Elisa Valtonen about the Cathedral here:

http://www15.uta.fi/FAST/FIN/REL/ev-cathe.html

For info about Hvitträsk:

http://www.nba.fi/en/museums/hvittrask

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Six Picks: the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris

17 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by Tim Bird in culture, France, music, Paris, Travel, travel photography

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Tags

cemetery, Chopin, Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Paris, Père Lachaise Cemetery, Piaf, religion

Six Picks – a photo blog drawn from my archives, much of which is on show at www.timbirdphotography.com

Paris and religion are this week’s buzzwords, so it seems like as good (or bad) a time as any to combine them in the symbols of the Père Lachaise Cemetery in the French capital, a wonderfully atmospheric place of burial and the resting place for the likes of Jim Morrison (probably), Oscar Wilde, Édith Piaf and Frédéric François Chopin, to name just a few of the celebrities, in addition to many other less well-known souls.

The cemetery is near Boulevard Menilmontant and was opened in 1804 on the site of a Jesuit retreat. It’s at turns touching, scary and poignant, very large and rambling,and well worth a visit.

These pictures were made using my previous Canon camera using a gimmicky little gadget called a Lens Baby that gives the spooky blurred effect.

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I have heard Oscar's memorial has been sealed off to prevent his many devotees from planting their lipstick on it.

I have heard Oscar’s memorial has been sealed off to prevent his many devotees from planting their lipstick on it.

A disturbing and hard-hitting memorial to French Jews who perished in the death camps of the Second World War.

A disturbing and hard-hitting memorial to French Jews who perished in the death camps of the Second World War.

Vampires?

Vampires?

She had no regrets.

She had no regrets.

Very sad.

Very sad.

Thank you for visiting – please drop in again. Find me also on Instagram as Indifreak and on Twitter as @BirdTimothy

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Six Picks: Colonial towns and volcanoes in Nicaragua

03 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by Tim Bird in art, Central America, culture, geology, Travel, travel photography

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Central America, colonial architecture, festival, Granada, Leon, Nicaragua, volcano, volcanoes

A photo blog delving into my travel photography archives at www.timbirdphotography.com

A few years ago I had an obsession with volcanoes. Or rather, my continuing obsession with volcanoes manifested itself in the form of several visits to Central America, to Guatemala, Costa Rica and Honduras, for example. One of those visits was to Nicaragua where I did managed to gaze, Frodo-like, into some ominously smoking volcanic craters. More of those later, but here is a quick New Year re-visit to the lakeside colonial gems of Leon and Granada, and a glimpse of one smoking vent.

Happy New Year, Six Picks visitor!

Street mural commemorating the July 23, 1959 massacre of slaughters in Leon.

Street mural commemorating the July 23, 1959 massacre of slaughters in Leon.

Street scene from the bell tower in Granada

Street scene from the bell tower in Granada

Firework celebrations in the square at Leon

Firework celebrations in the square at Leon

My guide, Jesus, took me to the mountain. Here he is peering in to the smouldering crater of the Telica volcano.

My guide, Jesus, took me to the mountain. Here he is peering dangerously into the smouldering crater of the Telica volcano.

Festival procession makes its way to the cathedral square in Leon.

Festival procession makes its way to the cathedral square in Leon.

Granada residents taking it easy

Granada residents taking it easy

Six Picks is a fairly regular introduction to my travel photography. To view my galleries, visit my website at www.timbirdphotography.com. If you enjoy your visits, please share, Tweet, shout and holler.

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