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All Photographs © Sam Oppenheim 1997-2010 |  |
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"Kanyakumari Dawn" - Tamil Nadu, India. -- (December 24th 2006)
- Sunrise at the southernmost tip of India.
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital RAW
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"Diggar Villager" - Diggar Village, Nubra Valley, Ladakh, India. -- (December 17th 2006)
- After hiking and camping for days, and crossing a very high mountain pass we reached the first village on our trail into the Nubra Valley and met this old woman in the outskirts of the diggar village. She was shoveling gravel off the trail to make it smoother and more of a dirt-path, and was willing to stop her work for a few photographs.
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital jpeg
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"Wedding Detail" - Long Island, NY, USA. -- (December 10th 2006)
- Congratulations to Mr. David & Mrs. Ellie Beatus! After casually photographing my friend's lovely wedding, I think this detail of his bride's hand on his back during the ceremony was the most beautiful, simple, evocative shot.
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital jpeg
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"Crater Lake Panorama" - Oregon, USA. -- (December 3rd 2006)
- Recently I rediscovered old sequences of shots I never spent the time to digitally 'stitch' together into panoramas. This is one of the striking images from my brother and my trip to Crater Lake, August 2005.
Camera & Film: Olympus SR-1 / Kodak Gold 400
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"High Himalayan Sunset" - Above Leh, Ladakh - India. -- (November 26th 2006)
- Sunset at 4700+ meters (15,000+ Feet)
South of our tents was this view of the Himalayan peaks opposite the ones we needed to ascend. Foreground orange-lichen-covered rocks lit by flash
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital jpeg
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"Ooty Farmer" - Ooty, Tamil Nadu - India. -- (November 19th 2006)
- This was an unexpectedly nice shot. I only photographed him because he asked, and didn't even look through the viewfinder. Actually it came out great! What a smile, eh? I like how his head and shoulders break the frame, that was serendipitous!
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital jpeg
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"Smile!" - Hampi, Karnataka - India. -- (November 12th 2006)
- Smile!
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital jpeg
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"Big Feet" - Shravanabelagola - India. -- (November 6th 2006)
- While visiting Karnataka, I swung by the town of Shravanabelagola where there is a holy 5 story-tall stone statue carved in the round. It is a Jain Tirthankar - Holy saint of Jainism (a meditation & pacifism-based religion that predates Buddhism and may have heavily influenced Buddha himself) The statue is bathed in holy water, milk, flowers, and more every 12 years in a maha-abhiyanga ceremony. I was fascinatingly lucky enough to have my visit coincide with the auspicious festival and stayed the night, seeing the ceremony the following morning. WOW!
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital jpeg
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"Sam as a Yak Cowboy" - Manali - India. -- (October 29th 2006)
- Happy Halloween!! I did not have any great appropriate artistic photos for Halloween.
So I picked this one! Just for fun :D Shot in the Manali forest where touts have Yaks for tourists to ride.
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital jpeg
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"Light" - Meenakshi Mandir, Madurai - India. -- (October 21st 2006)
- In South India I took some shots in the low-light interior of the humongous holy Meenakshi Temple. This is my favorite take, part of my 'images of faith and devotion' series. The man is touching Hanuman, the Hindu monkey-god, next he will touch his forehead and leave a red mark there, showing that he has seen god in the temple.
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital jpeg
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"Green" - Kanyakumari - India. -- (October 15th 2006)
- Kanyakumari is the holy pilgrimage site at the tippy-tip bottom of India, where the Indian ocean meets the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. In this photo you can see a woman drying her sari in the wind; a man (her husband I presume) is off camera. In the distance, behind the meeting of waters, is the Tiruvalluvar statue (a famous Tamil poet), and the Swami Vivekananda memorial temple.
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital jpeg
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"Sunita" - Vagator Beach, Goa - India. -- (October 8th 2006)
- In Goa I befriended the touts who sold trinkets on th beach. Sunita is 18 and married. She modeled for a few shots, and this was the best.
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital jpeg
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"Boy Monk" - Hemis Gompa, Ladakh, India. -- (October 1st 2006)
- One of my favorite shots of the little Buddhist monk boys wo inhabit all the Tibettan-Style Buddhist Monastaries in the Leh-Ladakh region of North-West India.
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital jpeg
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"Old Man and Child" - Tirumala, Andhra Pradesh, India. -- (September 24th 2006)
- The child's head is shaved for a visit to the Balaji Temple at Tirumala. Tirumala is probably the holiest temple in India. In fact, calculated by the average daily number of pilgrims, it is the busiest pilgrimage spot in the world; it eclipses Mecca, the Vatican, and Jerusalem. Why? The god enshrined there is believed to be Vishnu himself, as he has taken a birth as a stone god for the duration of this era (yuga).
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital jpeg
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"Tiruvannamalai Cows" - Vellore Fort, Tamil Nadu, India. -- (September 17th 2006)
- While leaving Tiruvannamalai (Ashram of Ramana Maharshi) I found a 'great wall' and it looked like I was in China for a minute; the ancient walls climbed hills on either side of the road. I had to stop, explore, and found these doe-eyed sublime cows in the ruins abutting village farms.
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital jpeg
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"Grim Reaper" - Gokarna, India. -- (September 10th 2006)
- When I traveled in South India I rented a car and driver just for opportunities like this: Photographing an old man ploughing his field in the monsoon rain alongside the road. Had I been on a bus I would never had gotten this shot. Yes, the greens are that vivid in India -fresh rice sprouts and bright light.
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital RAW
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"Zen Stone" - Mahabalipuram, India. -- (September 3rd 2006)
- This is one of my favorite nature shots from July, in South India. I really like the energy of the abstract shapes and the color contrasts (except for the white sky). Apparently this stone has been balanced there for 500 or 1000 years, and even when people tried to push it, including once with Elephants, it wouldn't move. So although it looks like it will roll any minute (and chase Indiana Jones) it won't. It is revered by Hindus for obvious reasons.
Camera & Film: Canon Powershot 70 - digital jpeg
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"Boy & Elephant" - Hampi, Karnataka State, India. -- (August 27th 2006)
- I decided to go with an easy choice that pairs well with the one below: another child from my trip to Hampi. He was a tourist visiting the temple with his father and I asked if I could shoot the boy alone, posing to get the elephant in the background to compare and contrast with the youth.
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital jpeg
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"Siblings" - Hampi, India. -- (July-August 2006)
- This is one of my favorite people shots from India so far this trip! Caught them down by the temple ghats while a domesticated temple elephant was bathing and so were the locals.
Camera & Film: Canon Digital Rebel XT - digital jpeg
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