Connecting

The Internet - devil and angel. Devil when you're thousands of miles from home, dying for news or an email from family or messages from Facebook friends. But you can't connect and life becomes a game of watching the dreaded spinning ball or spiraling circle or glacially creeping blue line that goes no where. Angel when you throw a question into cyberspace and someone on the other side of the world responds and virtual friendships become real friendships.This happened twice this trip. The first time was when I did a Google search for people doing alternative photography in India.* Only thing that came up was something called GoaCap - Goa Center For Alternative Photography. I applied for a short residency and was accepted for two weeks in February.I pretty much didn't know what to expect, so I packed up a lot of materials and supplies just in case (the biggest different between digital and alternative photography is the vast quantity and variety of things you need to actually make a photograph from film to chemicals to paper to cameras that don't know from media cards). Much of what I took (film and photo paper) is negatively affected by trips through security scanners. Every plane ride necessitated first requesting and then arguing with gate agents and screeners about why my x-ray sensitive materials needed to be hand checked. Fifty percent of the time I won, the other 50 percent my film and photo paper lost.I had two very productive weeks at Goa Cap thanks in very large part to Edson Diaz (shown here in a photo I took of him and his Leica):who was incredibly gracious with his time and expertise, teaching me processes such as albumen and salt printing - things I had never attempted before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albumen_print. I had brought a pinhole camera with me and we also made one out of a metal pot. which actually took some pretty interesting photos after a lot of fine tuning by Edson: Here are some examples of the prints I made at Goa Cap:These are a couple of prints I made using albumen and salt processing methods.The 2nd connection I made thanks to the Internet was to a fellow I met on a photography forum called (oddly enough) The Ugly Hedgehog. All I knew about Indrajeet Singh was that he lived in Goa and took amazing photographs of birds. I sent him a message asking for advice about where to buy film in India and one thing led to another which led to a gracious invitation to dine at a marvelous Indian restaurant during our stay here. Mickey (Indrajeet's nickname) and his lovely wife Zwe were charming, gracious hosts and who regaled us with stories of their adventures taking groups of photographers on wildlife safaris in parks and preserves all across India. We left that evening with two new friends as well as a long list of places to visit on our next trip here.*Alternative photography" in its simplest sense (and depending how strict your definition) is pretty much anything that's not digital, although a digital picture that is processed (printed) in a way that doesn't involve a ink jet printer (a cyanotype, for example) is considered Kosher - by some. It's confusing. I know. I've been interested in alternative processing every since I took a course with Lana Caplan at MassArt. Lana Z Caplan. I've now taken this course 3 times and plan to take it again next fall. Last year I spent several weeks studying with Syko Song in Taipei (see the blogs for December 2013).