Jul 30 2007

Wow, 3 days and counting...and now the "panic" starts to set in a little. Did I do this, did I do that...crap, what about this. The reality is, I have everything I need outside of some knick knacks, it's just starting to pack them instead of putting them in little piles strewn about the house.

I checked the weather for Kolkata today...90 degrees Fahrenheit and thunderstorms...woohoo! Got to love the idea of traveling to Asia during monsoon season.

The photo above is one of my favorites from my past trip to India. The original is absolutely horrid, but photoshop is such a wonderful tool sometimes. Remember back in the days of film, you'd snap a shot...a shot that you thought was going to be friggen outstanding. You wait for the film to get developed...and you end up with complete shit? And seeing as it's a month later and you are half way across the world...you just can't pop on over to take a second shot. Well, I guess in this case I do get a do over.

This is one of those photos (I have a whole set of these shots...all in various states of hosed, but I liked this one the best because of the person walking along the river). This is probably the best I can do to restore the photo. I kind of like the painted look it ended up with. You can see the original here.

Taken from Agra Fort in India from a window overlooking the Taj Mahal (where the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son and left to rot while for 20 years looking over the mausoleum he commissioned on the death of his favorite wife Arjumand Bano Begum (or at least that is what the tour guide told us...the only thing he told us...over and over. Oh, that and he had some very good shops so we shouldn't spend money anywhere else)).

The original shows the impact of traffic and pollution on Agra and the Taj Mahal and why steps are being taken to reduce pollution in the area. The "haze" you can see in the original is nothing more than good old fashioned smog.

Agra, India
December 2003

ps. I'm going to try and "live blog" the trip, making daily updates. If you are currently not on my blog notification list (or have not created an RSS Feed), and would like to be notified of updates, please send me an email at sean (at) redinkphotography (dot) com.