0

Ok, it's more of a "digitized" zero... but nonetheless, it's still a zero! The first of my number series. It was originally an "8"... but then I found a better 8. I like how the grid system in the background accentuates the harsh lines in the navy and light blue.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

This situation scared me a little.

Curious Dr. Pashupati asked the guy what ammunition he was using and he said "bb's".

(sigh of relief)

Therefore, I name this photograph LUCKY #7.

8

9

A

Found this upper case "A" holding up a bridge on the way to Rajasthan. You could also think of the vowel "A" as being a bridge between consonants... yup I passed KindergArten. I used to think it was called "kinder-garden"... why isn't it? Regardless, there is an A in kingerarten, three A's in Rajasthan, and an "A" in this picture. Hopefully I get an A on this blog assignment.

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

I believe this is a faucet in the cafeteria at MICA. You press the button and water comes out. The way they drink this water is unique compared to how we drink out of a water fountain. Above the faucet is a shelf of communal metal cups. You just take a cup, fill it up, drink it (on the spot) and then put it back on the shelf. There is no cleansing done to the cup. The next person just comes along and takes a gulp. This is why I drink bottled water. 15 Rs (US- 25c) is not too shabby for 1 liter of H20.

R

S

One of our assignments is to find all of the letters in the alphabet. This is my letter "S". The staircase was at an old truck stop. I like how the iron fence in the background tease your eye into looking at them...untill you find the "S". There is a "give and take" of focus between vertical rungs on the stairs and the horizontal garage behind it.

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

Underwear Man

Depth of Field- Lothal

I like how my camera (which is not fancy by any means- just an old Cannon something or rather) naturally focused on the grass and blurred out the background. You get a sense of how dry the grass is here, it looks like its about to break off into a thousand little pieces. Then again if you look at the clouds in the background a storm is hovering. The anticipation of the storm brought a subtle wind across the field that weaved throughout this grass.

Composition

Can't you just see Harley Davidson stamped across the bottom left corner? I know it may not be a Harley but it has that raw look. I like the subtle tonal variation in the intricate column on the right juxtaposed to the cement on the left. The white posts set a natural frame for the motorcycle making a good composition. The eye is drawn into the motorcycle, but makes a pit stop on the column and rock, and pipes. The wheel in the bottom right take your eye for a loop and channel the focus outward in a radial directions.

ORANGE. Yet another photograph that I didn't even have to do anything to in photoshop because of its burst of color. I did crop out the background because I thought his arms framed the picture. The curvature of the left arm draws your eye around the photograph...down the left arm and up the finger tips, it then ricoshays off the white wall back to his turban. It's a debate whether his piercing glance is the focal point, or his orange turban. Regardless it makes for a striking pose.

This Sikh was hanging out at the Sun Temple. He called me into his little temple room and dotted my forehead with some kind of orange paint. Not sure the relevance? But I did feel more pure after it happened. Too bad I sweated it off in like 2 minutes.

MIAMI VICE

Miami Vice? Nahhh...just a typical paint job on a house here. I barely touched this picture in Photoshop besides a little cropping. The colors here are so vibrant on their own! I liked how the negative space was naturally white. It made for a good contrast with the intensely saturated colors. The chartreuse and complimentary red set a dull foreground to the crazy aqua or blue/green.

I like this photo because of the irony. What is a fan doing next to a chandelier in a Hindu temple? In my Consumer behavior class we addressed the DNA of Indian society as having a "This as well as that" mentality. They don't always choose one extreme or the other, old traditional ways or modern, but rather it is a living breathing hybrid. It is important for marketers and advertisers to pay attention to this. For instance, a company tried to get chocolate into the huge candy market but at first try failed. They then discovered Dvali (the festival of lights) would be a good market pitch. They created lantern like packaging for the candies and sure enough they flew off the shelf.

Creative Alert!

Creativity Blog is taking over from here for one of my classes. So If I'm posting a bunch of photos and talking about them in an artsy way... bare with me!

Gandhi's House

The man himself.
So this is where the "speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil" originated!? Gandhi had some monkey sculptures of it & thought it made a cool drawing.
My camera battery died so I took the time to do a drawing of Gandhi's house. Some of the Indian tourists/locals started to come up and talk to me when I was drawing. I should have put a hat out...but it seemed disrespectful to Gandhi's ways.

The Sun Temple, Adalaj well

This was a well 5 stories down.


A painting of the sun temple.
The sun temple "pool" where Hindus wash their hands/take baths before entering the temple.
The Sun Temple, Hindu Temple, 1,000 years old!
Dogs tend to find shade in India...
A little encounter on the highway.
What we deal with when we travel.
This guy hangs out on the roof of our dorm. He's about 4 ft tall when he stands. I call him Abu.

The Old City

We went on a heritage walk through the "Old City" in Ahmedabad a few days ago. (MICA where our campus is in the "new city". The first temple is a Muslim temple & the second, more colofrul one is a Hindu temple (see practicing Monks in orange). The market was neat to see, but nothing unique enough to purchase. It was mostly food they were selling. Everyone was really friendly and wanted their picture taken! I really felt like a foreigner here, a lot of the people have never seen a white person.

I have a lot more photos on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/?sk=messages&tid=1227270581292#!/album.php?aid=2050636&id=1307730065

I'm at this school called MICA (Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad)

http://www.mica-india.net/

It's a graduate school and there's about 500 students here from different of India. They are all really friendly and smart!

Last night was the first time it rained in Ahmedabad in TWO YEARS...you can imagine the excitement of the students. We heard all of this yelling and chanting and went outside. All of the students were dancing and splashing around in the rain. We decided to join them and got dunked in 2 feet of water! SOOO MUCH RAIN. But it was a blast & they taught us some awesome Bollywood dance moves. We even listened to some US music: Pitbull, Shakira, Black Eyed Peas. (but I like their tunes better). The only bad part was when we got back to our rooms they were flooded and bugs everywhere -- eeeek!

Travel

Me, Eve (roomate), & Andrew in Frankfurt airport. 8am beers (hey we were jet lagged)

36 hours of traveling and we're finally here!

The route:
Kansas City--> Dallas June 28th (1.5 flight)
Dallas-->Newark, NY (Saw the New York sky line for the first time...phenomenal). June 29th (3 hr flight+ 2 hr layover)
Newark-->Frankfurt (8 hr flight + 2 hr layover+my first GERMAN beer!)
Frankfurt--> Ahmedabad (8 hr flight+Invictus+Avatar+The Rebound & Bollywood film "London Dreams"= a neck cramp)



So we arrived in Ahmedabad airport at 9pm. After customs & witnessing an airport fight between the locals, we made it to MICA. When I stepped off the plane I knew I was some place foreign. The air is thick here, much much thicker than Texas heat. It smells also. A mixture of dirt, India food, BO & cow dung. The bus ride through the city of Ahmedabad was humbling... I thought I'd seen homeless people in LA. Here there are people literally sleeping outside every 50 yards on the side of the street. Not to mention we saw a couple stray cows & camels. It was a 20 minute bus ride to the campus from the airport and it was silent, we were all shocked.

Who needs luggage?

6 weeks... and my stuff fits into two small bags! To give you an idea of how tiny my roller bag is I stood next to it... YIKES!

Keys to packing light:

1. 5 outfits

2. Compress clothes in ziplock baggies (Kuddos to Aunt Annie for the advice)

3. mini EVERYTHING!

4. share things with your roomie

5. Pack a week in advanced. That way you can talk to folks (and maybe yourself-that's normal right?) about what you really need/don't need.

Namaste.

Blog Design

Ok, I realize this is a very BRIGHT blog, but I'm just getting ready for the overload of color that will greet me in New Delhi when we step off the plane. Please comment if this neon stuff hurts your eyes. Travel plans: Leave for Dallas Monday. New York Tuesday. Frankfurt Tuesday. India Wednesday? I'm going to find the time zone difference so I know when it's appropriate to skype people.

My skype name "bweltbwelt"

SMU adventures

I'm going to try and post stuff here also!

http://smu.edu/smunews/adventures/