This is a picture (taken by my grandma) of when he won 'Lawn of the Month' late last year!
My grandparents live in Florida in the winter (because that's what grandparents do) and up until this year, spent their summers near Watkins Glen, NY. My grandpa turned 90 in November and so they decided driving from Florida to NY every year was too much, even though he still does all his own yard work, including mowing the lawn twice a week and occasionally dredging the canal they live on. Dredging is when Grandpa goes into the canal where the alligators live to pull up the encroaching weeds and other muck. One time, just a few years ago, he saw an alligator lounging in the sun near his dock on the canal. He marched over there with a shovel and bonked the gator on the head. The gator was so shocked that it retreated into the canal instead of eating my grandpa. Unfortunately, I don't have a photograph of the alligator concussion, and I made Grandpa promise to never hit an alligator on the head again. Ever.
My husband and I visited my grandparents in February, right after they had their driveway paved. My grandfather was so proud of his newly paved driveway and excited about the big pile of dirt that was left from the excavation. I asked him why he didn't have the driveway contractors take the dirt away and he said, "Because I can use it!" And he did. Every last bit of that dirt ended up in the low places in his yard. He moved every bit, by hand, with a shovel. I was amazed.
This summer I've been using Kodak Gallery for posting pictures and emailing the links to friends and family, but my grandparents don't have email. I decided to send them a big stack of prints from the gallery, from several albums, so that they can keep up with all our adventures. I was able to send pictures from several of my gallery albums, like this one of me sailing on Green Bay. Well, I guess I wasn't actually doing the sailing. Getting prints shipped to my grandparents from the gallery was easier for me than making a CD and taking it to a store to get them printed, or trying to coax our inkjet printer at home to print without streaks.
My mom recently told me that my grandma loves her big stack of prints, and at every opportunity shows her friends and neighbors. She enjoys explaining all of our antics in the pictures. Summer without my grandparents close by has been difficult for me this year, but I'm glad I'm able to share my pictures with them.
Madhav Mehra
VP Product Marketing and Management, Kodak Easyshare Gallery
Mention India to most people in America and it conjures up images of an unknown land, often mired with notions of Poverty, the Caste System, excessive Population, and perhaps most recently, Software! After all, that is how the media has portrayed India.
But honestly, how many of you thought 'COLOR'?
That is what India truly is. Color. Color in our Diversity, Color in our Religion, Color in our Festivals, Color in our Languages, but most noticeably, Color in our People.
I look at the picture above and am still struck by the elegance and color. A special occasion - hardly. These are probably most of the clothes she owns and the jewelry is most likely inherited. She is out carrying a tray of henna, along with the assorted tools to decorate the hands of young women - a custom that is common at Indian weddings. Some of my favorite pictures from this and other trips are viewable at my Gallery.
Photography changed my perspective of India 21 years ago. As a young idealist, when I went back to India after having received a brand new education in the US, I saw what most people from the US see. Crowds, traffic, power outages and more traffic. That was in 1982. When I went back in 1985, I worked for Kodak and had discovered photography. This time I saw India through the lens. Color, character, contrast, contradiction. But always, charm. It was an amazing realization, a realization that led to peace with who I was, peace brought out by photography.
Photographing people in India is not easy. The overhead sun creates a lot of shadows and contrast. It is best to take pictures in the shade of a building or at dusk. People are usually friendly and willing to be photographed, though often curious as to why. A long lens helps isolate the subject from the background, while a conversation puts them at ease. The picture above was made with Kodak Portra 200 film, at dusk by the Ganges, in the holy city of Haridwar.
This picture is being featured on the homepage of kodak.com for the next two weeks. More of my photos from In and Around Hardiwar are in my Gallery Premier account. Take a look and let me know what you think...
As many of my friends know, I love airplanes and whether it's by nature or nurture my four-year-old son Reed loves airplanes too. Lately his favorite airplane is the SR-71 Blackbird. It's probably because one of his airplane videos shows a SR-71 with lots of fire coming out the back.
When you're four, there's nothing better then a jet that shoots fire out the back.
This year our annual Outer Banks summer vacation took us through the Northern Virginia Dulles area where there just happens to be the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. This is the new annex to the Air & Space Museum in Washington D.C. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is a beautiful museum and features the Boeing Aviation Hanger, a huge building housing hundreds of aircraft. One of the centerpiece aircraft of the museum is the SR-71! Reed was excited and of course I was too.
I had a Kodak V570 with me, a small compact digital camera that has a wide-angle lens and panoramic stitching feature. I will talk more about panoramic stitching in future blogs. Conditions were difficult: A seven-hour car ride, two tired kids, a McDonald's looming in the food court and of course the SR-71 (a completely black aircraft).
The Boeing Aviation hanger is a large dark space with bright windows on each end. The small flash of a compact digital camera just doesn't provide the fill lighting needed for such an open space. I tried my best to steady the camera as well as play with the ISO settings. What ISO controls is how sensitive the image sensor is to the amount of light present. The higher the ISO the more sensitive the image sensor becomes giving you the capability to take pictures in low-light situations. This can be tricky though because a higher ISO often creates more "noise" within an image.
I didn't get technically good pictures, but when your four years old, a picture of you and a SR-71 is a great one and that's really what photography is all about. I printed out the panoramic image and it now hangs in Reeds room. It's pretty cool.
If you are ever in the Dulles Virginia area, the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is definitely worth the stop and you too can see the SR-71.
