I must admit to a bit of embarrassment. In all the running around with getting Cow Digital LLC established and organizing our fundraising effort for our upcoming film, I more or less forgot I have a personal website sitting here When we launched last night, we did our routine sharing across Facebook and Twitter, a few people reposted, and we called it a night after what had been quite a long day. I can’t believe I failed to create a post...
I realize it would normally be a little late to fill people in on what I was doing in India clear back in July, but since it directly connects with what we’re doing this year, this is as good a time as any. Back in 2003, a group of high school students here in Norfolk, NE became aware of the Dalit people of India. Considered outside the caste system entirely, the Dalit have been oppressed for thousands of years. The term “Dalit” is...
Well after months of sifting through photos again and again and again (seriously, I’ve been through them one-by-one several times), I am pleased to finally present the India photos online in their [essential] entirety. You can see them over at SmugMug, where the galleries look fantastic, and prints are available through Bay Photo. India 2011 Galleries The galleries have been online for about 5 days, but with private access only for the team. I was...
Today I signed a petition to abolish the TSA. Their extravagant displays of perceived security are a joke, and it’s becoming more and more of a waste of time and tax payer money. I don’t particularly enjoy having to arrive so early to the airport that driving becomes negligibly longer than flying (my trip back from Toronto last year was only five hours shy of driving). Obviously, if you’ve noticed my most recent posts, you’ll...
This would have been much more fitting as a first image, but that couldn’t be done since this was taken on the last day. One of our team leaders, Megan Lund, had the idea to line the kids up and spell out India, and take it from above. I jumped at the idea because I of course had my 8mm fisheye on the trip, which would be fantastic for the shot. We debated whether we should do all caps, lowercase, or what, since we weren’t sure how many kids...
The photo above is not my work. That stunning piece of imagery was captured by Timothy Metcalf, a 17-year-old student who has an amazing eye for photography. He ventured with us to India, along with two of his siblings, Danielle (who previously spent four months there) and Jessica. Tim was Nikon shooter, whereas I shoot Canon, which actually made things a lot more fun. The hardware of the two is virtually identical other than controls. In fact, it feels like many of the controls are arbitrarily flipped around for the sake of being different (light meters, lens attachment, zoom… all backwards). But I got to start learning new hardware, and was quite impressed with Nikon’s low light performance, quiet shutter and light weight. If I hadn’t already started investing in Canon lenses, I probably would have considered Nikon… well that and Canon’s video rawks 
From day to day though, we focused little on the camera wars and instead just had a blast being able to geek out over photography with each other. It was also awesome being able to bounce ideas off each other and see what the other one was shooting, or in a few cases just asking “what’d you shoot that at?!” Over time we found that we tended to have an eye for the same thing, and whilst sitting in the front of the bus shooting pictures out the windows, we would frequently hone in on the same shot… sometimes at almost the exact same time, as seen below. As a result we started separating whenever we could so we wouldn’t turn up with a bunch of the same stuff 
Fortunately for Tim, he got to stay an extra week with his sisters and see more of India than just Hyderabad. He’s still recovering from jet lag at this point I’m sure, but he has already begun posting photos on his blog, which I encourage everyone to follow. We’re hoping to get together this weekend and start going through photos together. Meanwhile I’ve been rejecting thousands of my own shots to get things down to something manageable.
I was certainly thrilled to have Tim along taking pictures, and would jump at the chance to return to India with him to take more. The more we can do that, the more imagery we can bring back and show the world the oppression the Dalit face. It has been an eye-opening experience and I am eager to get things ready to show everyone.
Well I’m back in the states now, so I should go ahead and say upfront that this isn’t as much of a live update as I had hoped. I’ll be playing catchup over the coming days and possibly weeks as I find more photos I wish to publish and more stories to share along with them.
Photographing children in India is a double-edged sword. On one hand, they are adorable and photogenic as can be. On the other hand, I frequently found myself being swarmed by them once they saw the camera. Throughout the entire trip, I found that Indians in general are either indifferent to being photographed, or absolutely thrilled. Kids in particular love it, and if you take a picture of one, be prepared to take a picture of them all, and every combination of group pictures they can think of until you finally say “no” and walk away. And frankly, how often will you do that?
The little girl featured above and below was standing just outside a classroom where I was, waiting for school to let out. I saw her before she saw me, and I pivoted around to snap a photo of her leaning on the wall with her backpack, but not before she looked over. Once I clicked the first shot, she took her backpack off and turned, leaning on the wall. I snapped another shot. She started walking around the pillar. I snapped a third shot. Her eyes never left the lens. She was posing! This little girl was cute as can be and knew it! She finally got to the ledge and I moved out of the classroom to get a couple close-ups. I shot two (the first which is above) and was about to show her the images (another thing you have to do with Indian kids; “show me sir?”) and ask what her name was when the classrooms around us erupted and kids swarmed around me. Endless shouts of “one photo sir!” kept me down for a good 10 minutes, and I lost track of her, although she did end up in one group photo early on in the swarm.
This little girl was one of the quite kids and these are not only some of my favorite shots from the trip, but the story I just told about them will remain with me forever.
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Yesterday we visited the Uddamarry school for the first time. It was our second day in India, but our first time meeting the Dalit children. Thus far I have been processing so much that it is difficult to put into words, so I’m grateful that I’m here to capture so many images. The photo above illustrates the day quite well I think. It features our other photographer, Timothy Metcalf, as he single-handedly keeps about a third of the students occupied while they tear around the school yard in a cloud of dust and clamor for a ride on his unicycle. Once he stopped, the children would catch up and swarm around him. We hope to get some fisheye shots of this phenomenon soon; unfortunately a massive strike prevented us from visiting the school today.
Much much more to come!
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Talking with others on the India trip about previous years, it seems it isn’t complete without some sort of last minute shipment of some sort not showing up, usually involving someone’s passport or visa. Luckily that is all taken care of at this point. But I just hit a snag that has left me rather angry.
I ordered extra camera batteries from ebay earlier in the week, and knowing it was getting a little late, I went ahead and paid for 1-day shipping on both. This was late Wednesday afternoon, so I figured at the very latest, I could still get them by Saturday. On Thursday I received a call from one of the sellers and was informed that they made a mistake and did not have the battery in stock. This was unfortunate since it was the more crucial of the batteries I needed. It was for the little Canon VIXIA HF R200 which has an astonishing 1-hour battery life. They apologized, refunded me entirely, and I figured “oh well, I still have two new batteries and a grip coming for the 60D. At least that should power through once the little guy dies.”
Well it’s Saturday night now and still no package. I pulled up the confirmation email, found the tracking number, and discovered that the seller didn’t ship my package until late in the day on Friday—hours after it should have been in my hands. I also found that it had already processed through Omaha’s sorting facility at 6 AM, meaning it has to be sitting in Norfolk’s post office right now. USPS is of course notorious for having delayed tracking, and if it had been through Omaha, it was in Norfolk just a few hours later at most.
I now face a problem. We leave for Omaha around 6 AM on Monday, two hours before the post office opens. However, given the fact that we have 27 people in our group, we leave on several different flights. My flight doesn’t leave until 1:15, meaning I could go to the post office immediately in the morning and still make it to Omaha with plenty of time to spare. The other thing I could run into is if they send the driver out with my package, in which case I hope they can track him down and get the package off the truck (which has been known to happen on previous India trips ).
At any rate, I’ve already contacted the seller. Since I can’t leave negative feedback for seven days, I sent them an email requesting a refund on the shipping at least. I’m sure I can probably work something out and get the package Monday morning, but it infuriates me that I must go through this when I paid extra to specifically not have to. Bleh. Anywho, I’m looking forward to the trip. We have a send-off tomorrow morning; just under 24 hours prior to actually leaving. w00t w00t!
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This is the teaser poster that we put together a year and a half ago. You can surely get a sense of how many delays we’ve had on this project. However, I see each delay as an opportunity to make the film even better. Hopefully this gives a sense of what to expect in the upcoming duel
Okay… probably not really. But I thought I’d be in Phoenix for minutes; basically spending more time waiting on the plane than scurrying through the airport. After a little while, the pilot told us there was a security incident in the terminal, but it shouldn’t affect our flight. We chilled for a while longer, and then were informed that the “incident” was in fact a bomb threat on a flight 405 to San Francisco. We were 403 to SF; 405 didn’t exist.
Shortly after that, we were informed that another threat was made on our flight, so the Phoenix police showed up with their awesome puppy dogs (although I didn’t see any) to sniff out the luggage, and we were told we would have to deplane and go through security again, while they unloaded all the luggage and searched the plane far away from the terminal.
They took us in groups of 30 and had a whole path marked off with police to allow us through. I noted to another passenger that by this point, we were supposed to be landing in San Francisco. By the time we got back to the gate, we in the last group discovered flight 403 had been cancelled. But luckily they simply created a new flight with a new plane and crew just for us, and automatically rebooked us. So we got to just stand in line for an hour or so to get our boarding pass (since there were people who were missing connecting international flights). Now I’m hanging out for another 45 minutes or so until we start boarding.
Once my phone gets some juice from my laptop here, since SkyHarbor has NO outlets for passengers that I can find, I think I’ll just have lunch here. Although not Quizno’s, I learned my lesson when I went to LA
I’m not just being cute with the title, I seriously experienced both a primary and secondary spontaneous pneumothorax. The ‘secondary’ part means that some external factor triggered the collapse of my lung. I think you could also call it a “traumatic pneumothorax,” but this works too… and fits my blog titles better While I was in the hospital in November, a CT scan revealed indications that my right lung was also showing early signs of an eventual collapse. I suppose at the time, nothing much could be done. But as a result, it was expected that I might experience a collapsed right lung at some point in the future.
That turned out to happen sooner than anyone expected. About seven or eight weeks after my first surgery, and less than a week into returning to work at the theater, I slipped on the ice on our front porch and fell on my right side. At first I was glad I hadn’t fallen on the left, but as it was later discovered, this most likely triggered my right lung into partially collapsing. I didn’t notice anything until the following night at a friend’s wedding on New Years Eve, when I felt a very familiar pain in my chest, of course this time on my right side. I worried that I might end up at the hospital, but then the pain went away and didn’t bother me the rest of the night. Nothing bothered me for another couple of days. Then while I was working that Sunday afternoon (January 2nd), I began to feel pains again that wouldn’t go away. I had to sit down frequently and honestly didn’t know if I was going to make it through my shift. I had a feeling I would be visiting the ER before the end of the night.
I did manage to make it through my shift and made it home, where I promptly laid down on the couch. The pain would come and go, and I was somewhat worried about overreacting. But as of the day before, I was once again insured, so my parents took me to the emergency room. Given the collapsed left lung two months earlier, I was given my now 18th chest x-ray (by this point I could go through the motions in my sleep, and sometimes did), which revealed my right lung to be about 30% collapsed. Medical journals vary on this point, but it is generally assumed that when under 22-30%, no chest tube need be inserted. It was a relief to know my body might be able to fight this one off on its own, as I didn’t want to experience a chest tube again, particularly the insertion of one.
I was discharged that night and had an appointment with the specialist the next morning (different doctor from November, but same office). He determined since I had a pneumothorax already, that they would just go ahead with the surgery the following morning. This was a bummer in that I’d have to be in the hospital again, but I’d rather go through the surgery than a chest tube on its own. (more…)
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