First early spring, sunny Sunday in Central Park!

Arrived in NYC Saturday night. Awoke to the first sunny Sunday in early spring. Just after noon I headed to Central Park with my camera and was not disappointed! Seemed the city had turned out to enjoy!

Jodhpur photo honors and signs of rapid change in India.

Over the Fourth of July weekend Marin County, California holds it’s annual County Fair, reputed to be one of the best in the country for it’s Fine Arts exhibitions. So, this year you can imagine how pleased I was when one of my images was chosen “Best in Class” for Monochromatic Photography.

Recently, over several years, I had spent about two weeks each in Jodhpur, in the state of Rajasthan in India. I was doing a still photography documentary about a Muslim girl who wanted to become a doctor and had great support from her family.

The other thing I always looked forward to in Jodhpur, was photographing in the vibrant streets, and markets in this small, ancient Indian city. I had found that about 5 p.m. each afternoon the light came streaming through the city’s major market street and was often magnificent.

It was in this street, at that hour that I took the three black and white photos in this post. The one to the right has been an award winner several times, including this year’s county fair.

Below are two others in that series. The year after I took the one with the man and the cows, I marveled that the same small street was a totally different scene – lots of motorcycles and motor scooters and no cows in site – signs of very recent prosperity!

On the right below, is a woman carrying her groceries in that 5-gallon can on her head, something else that was nowhere to be seen as prosperity took over in subsequent years.

Yes, prosperity is bringing large, rapid changes to many parts of India. It is growing harder to find “the old India”.

Technical notes: Photos were taken with my first digital SLR, a Canon Rebel XT, and the 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS lens that I still use on my Canon 40D today. The images were then converted from color to black & white in Photoshop.

[Addendum: The Indian photos were taken in October 2005]