243 / slight changes

In India, in the 70's, it was hard to get colour film;

b/w just didn't do it for me, & then some I only have as contact prints,

so thats when a computer was great: I can not only fix the
scratched little contacts, but also add a little colour.
India is always magnificently coloured.

Went twice to the Pushkar Mela, an unforgettable treat.

The saddler used vivid colour, but I used paler ones to give 

that old memory feel

This was around '69, in Ubud, Bali

also in Pushkar - & all parts of India -
lighting up a bedi

this worked much better with 2 photos

- its a self portrait. The silhouette is me taking a one handed

shot at the beach.

242 / & by computer

Some of the photo alterations worked much

better once I got a computer

(Cape Cod)

& /or I needed to make them a bit more 

'professional'

(Mexico)

you may have seen them in some books I illustrated

(north of San Francisco)

these days I don't get prints so often, 

though I like making photo books,

& its great to see photos on a big screen

had never seen an iced tree before that winter

in Colorado

rocks near my friends house in New Mexico

Darjeeling chickens

a tree fern at Springbrook, in Queensland,

a remarkably wet year

241 / altered photos

At some time in the 1980's I realised I could add 

a bit of paint to my photos

(Dalhousie)

to bring out things that were almost visible

(London)

sometimes just a couple of strokes were enough

& I liked that it should be such a surprise, since

people were expecting just a photo

(Bangalow)

some photos were old, & I didn't find the hiding folk 

till later, at other times I took the photo because

they were visible

& sometimes it reflected states of mind,

no doubt

Some I've subsequently used in books,

& then I usually had to fix them up a bit on the computer

I stayed at this hotel while I finished the I Ching book,

in San Miguel Allende

Some friends were renting a place here, in southern Mexico.

With the photos, its possible to turn them in the light,

& see where the paint is, this one comes slowly

without that aid

& the tree person/spirit I could see in this

rather mysterious forest in Chiapas

Although I'd been at least one winter in Canada, in Colorado

it was really full on, in the country

the forest was full of entities

there were very few people around, & you know that

hush in snow, & when you hear the plop of falling snow:

I felt they were playing with me

as I've probably said before, nature seems to love

to be admired.. thats not quite the way to say it, but there

is a sense of something reciprocal ~

wouldn't you say?

240 / back then

Also took a bus across to Leh, from Srinagar, one year,

lost many of the photos due to the vagaries of

time, place, monsoons, mail...

At the time I was living in Dalhousie, in Himachel Pradesh.

I helped start a small school for the children of the 

Tibetan refugees who were weaving carpets.

Later they were moved to the south of India.

Left below is the bazaar in Dalhousie, it was a long walk 

up the hill to my house. Now the hill appears to be covered

in houses. In the early to mid '70's you could only see a few,
looking up to Upper Bakrota.

239 / Kashmir

Was several times in Kashmir in the '70's, 

these are scanned from old prints

It is or was a very beautiful place

though not without some difficulties, 

in the city especially

It could look so calm, & peaceful

Once we took a 'picnic' boat for a week,

with 2 crew, the country people were just great,

sometimes kids would run beside us on the shore;

doubt if thats possible now.

238 / ocean paintings

These have been stored for a while

unpacked them to show to someone who'd seen others 

from that time

there's some I'd like to fiddle with, but don't wish to

interrupt the mountain ones in progress

for me, theres something like a water 'zone',

its very different to an earth zone
(zone being the state of mind the pictures happen in)

maybe if

 you are a super competitive mountain climber

or swimmer etc, its different - more of a race

this is more about the difference between the elements

237 / plans

Plans to visit Nepal in October are in flux.

Bought my plane ticket before the earthquakes,

the insurance will not pay if I cancel
(here is at Angkor)

so I've been looking at what it is that draws me to 

parts of Asia, & what I love to photograph
(beautiful ruins in Vietnam that were bombed, I think)

the ravages of time & nature, of course,

& the signs of long ago past events, here in Thailand

I really enjoy time's hand on surfaces

& an (isolated) story like this.

But how will it be, with half a million houses destroyed,

almost all the historical monuments,

& so many wonderful Nepalese people left with nothing?

Webjet says they don't insure for 'loss of enjoyment'.

They'd never understand things like 

feeling the difficulties all around me.

It would break my heart.

Shall wait to see what I do, come October.