It Always Rains On ‘Show Days’
There is a tradition that it always rains on ’show days’ and sure enough it started raining heavily as we approached the showground of the Great Yorkshire Show that is held in Harrogate in the north of England in July each year.

The Threatening Sky At The Great Yorkshire Show

The Great Yorkshire Show is the largest agricultural show in England and, as we drove in and were guided by the stewards past fields full of parked cars, we envisaged a long and muddy tramp ahead of us from the car to the entrance gate to the show.

We parked and sat and waited out the rain. Through the steamed-up windows we sat and watched the comings and goings, trying to work out which way to walk to the showground.

As well as looking forward to enjoying the show, we were looking for opportunities to take photographs for the Animals category of our ecard collection. Consequently, the prospect of rain the whole afternoon was not what we had hoped for.

Then the rain stopped and the sun came out between banks of white clouds and we walked through the fields, dodging the puddles until we reached the track that led to the show.

Although the sky grew dark and threatening again during the afternoon – as you can see in the photograph above – it didn’t rain.

This sense of keeping one eye out for the unreliable weather is a facet of England that everybody learns to live with. It’s one of the jokes about the social interactions of the English that the first and most regular topic of conversation is the weather.

An Oddity
Agricultural shows are a long-standing tradition in England. They take place at various towns up and down the country, mostly in the summer months.

Yet these shows are an oddity in some ways. If a visitor from another planet were dropped into the Great Yorkshire Show, he might come away thinking that England was a country where everyone was involved in farming.

The fact is though, that the overwhelming majority of the people who attend the shows are urban dwellers because England is of course an urban society. It ceased being a network of rural communities generations ago

Yet going to these shows is like stepping into a parallel world of people who live and work in the English countryside, as though we rub shoulders with them every day.

Farmers And Their Animals
The English countryside is beautiful, but it is not quaint. English farms are amongst the most highly efficient and mechanised in the world.

Because of this mechanisation and efficiency there is a tendency to think that farmers regard their animals as ‘produce’ rather than as individuals. It is obvious however from watching the farmers at the shows that they have a caring relationship with their animals.

That was brought out very forcibly during the epidemic of foot and mouth (FMD) disease of 2001 when hundreds of thousands of cattle and sheep were buried in mass graves or incinerated under government orders to try to contain the outbreak. There were interviews on television then with farmers who were crying at the loss of their animals.

All For One - A Quillcards Ecard

Foot And Mouth Disease
The evidence suggests that the outbreak in 2001 began when pigs were fed catering swill that contained illegally imported meat that was infected with the FMD virus.

FMD is an airborne virus. Pigs are relatively resistant to infection this way, but having eaten the swill they became ‘virus factories’ pumping out plumes of the virus into the air where it then spread to cows and sheep.

In the acute stage, the symptoms are blistering around the feet and mouth. Animals rarely die from the disease but the long-term effect is that they don’t regain full health and they are often in pain. Therefore the disease is a risk both to the welfare of the animal and to the farming economy.

At the time of the outbreak, many farms were off limits to visitors. Nor were the animals permitted to leave the farms. We remember visiting farms outside the known areas of contamination and driving and walking through shallow troughs of disinfectant that were set across the entrance to farms. Everyone entering and leaving had to walk or drive through these troughs.

2007 Outbreak
There was another outbreak of FMD in 2007, but by then the lessons of the earlier outbreak had been learned and the outbreak was contained in the south east of England and stopped.

There were no disinfectant troughs at the Yorkshire Show and if there had been a reported outbreak this year, I do not think the Great Yorkshire Show would have taken place.

The Main Event
It is farm animals that dominate the events at agricultural shows, and showing animals and winning rosettes is a serious business. This is so whether it is for cows, pigs, or any other farm animals.

However, we spent most of our time looking at the sheep, taking photographs for our ecards, and in talking to the sheep farmers.

Sheep
There are over 40 million sheep in the United Kingdom, which in a population of 60 million people means that one doesn’t have to travel far to see sheep in the fields.

Sheep Saying Hello - A Quillcards Ecard

About 50 per cent of the flocks are from the hill regions of Scotland, Wales, and the Lake District. They are cross-bred each year with upland sheep who are then bred with lowland sheep to encourage the best genetic mix.

That is why there are 70 breeds of sheep and a further 12 recognised crosses in the UK living everywhere from the harsh, hill areas in the north to the lowland ‘downs’ or valleys near the south coast.

Sheep In Yorkshire Dales - A Quillcards Ecard

Lamb
If you are wondering where the lamb that reaches British tables comes from, it is the male cross-bred lambs that are taken off to market at about three months old.

When they have been taken away, it’s eerie and poignant to travel past a field that was full of sheep a few days before and now see only the mother ewes.

Benefits And Dangers
While cross-breeding helps maintain the health of sheep, transporting sheep to different parts of the country at breeding season was cited as one of the reasons that the foot and mouth epidemic spread so quickly throughout Britain.

Breeds
Some of the breeds of sheep have delightful names and wonderful appearances to go with the names. For example, at the show we saw the Leicester Longwool breed of sheep that has long strings of delicate, silky curls that stretch like beaded curtains to the ground all along its body.

Then there is the Hampshire Down breed, with short legs, short muzzles, and a characteristic chubbiness – as you can see in this photo.

Hampshire Down Sheep

We have seen the Herdwick breed of sheep many times. This is the breed that was saved for the nation by Beatrix Potter on her farms in the Lake District.

These hardy hill sheep and other similar breeds like the Blackface and the Swaledale are a the top of the cross-breeding chain. They are crossed with Upland sheep like the Border Leicester which produces mules or half-breeds that are then crossed with the lowland breeds like the Lincoln Longwool and the Hampshire Down.

For the first time, however, we saw Herdwick sheep that had recently been shorn. Then we were able to see that they have long, elegant necks that are normally hidden by a coarse grey and white fleece or jacket as farmers sometimes call the fleece.

Herdwick Sheep With Jacket - A Quillcards Ecard

Talking to a farmer who farms in the Lake District he told us that he knows the face of each one of his flock of Herdwicks.

When six of his sheep were stolen earlier this year, he knew immediately which six faces were missing.

Sheep Shearing Exhibition
At intervals throughout the day two sheep shearers put on an exhibition of sheep shearing. One sheared used electric clippers while the other used hand shears.

Sheep Sheering Exhibition

The commentator explained that all shearers know how to use hand shears because they travel the world with their trade and sometimes they are called upon to work far from a source of electricity.

As we have seen before, such as when we visited Masham Sheep Fair, shearers wear short felt bootees to prevent themselves sliding about on the floor when it becomes covered in lanolin from the fleeces.

Of course the electric clippers worked much faster than the hand shears, but it was amazing how quickly the shearer with the hand shears clipped the fleece off an animal.

In fact the whole business was over so quickly that the shorn sheep looked as though they were unsure what had just happened.

Somewhat Startled After Shearing

Sheep, Farmers, And The Great Yorkshire Show is a post from: Quillcards

Related posts:

1. Beatrix Potter and Herdwick Sheep
2. Sheep in the Yorkshire Dales
3. The Masham Sheep Fair 2009 in England
4. The Yorkshire Dales Visitor Guide Features Our Photograph
5. Almscliff Crag in North Yorkshire, England

Background
In 1991 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Oganization adopted a plan of action for the worldwide reduction of incidental catches of seabirds in driftnets, longlines and gillnets used by fishing vessels.

Terminology
A longline is a baited fishing line anything up to 75 miles (120km) in length that is let out into the water behind a fishing vessel.

A gillnet is a net hung vertically in the water behind a fishing vessel and kept vertical by floats at the top and weights at the bottom.

A driftnet is a string of gillnets tied end to end. They may be many miles long and instead of being anchored at the far end as gillnets are, they are allowed to drift with the current.

How They Kill Birds
Birds are attracted by the offal that the fishing vessels dump, and the birds will follow the vessels and congregate precisely because they know there are likely to be easy pickings.

Once there, the birds are lured by the bait on the hooks on the longlines and they crash into the gillnets as they dive and chase fish underwater.

For some birds, the easy pickings are fatal.

Estimated Two Million Seabirds Killed
The Royal Society For The Protection Of Birds and Birdlife International estimate that in the last ten years two million seabirds have died by being hooked on longlines or trapped in gillnets in European waters.

The record for the south Atlantic and the Pacific is better.

It is the European fishing areas that are failing to fish so as to minimise bycatch, as catching birds incidentally is called.

Driftnets
Driftnets of any length have been banned in certain waters worldwide since 1991 because of their impact on species such as dolphin, turtles, swordfish, and tuna.

Driftnets over one-and-a-half miles (2.5km) in length have been banned in European Union Waters since 1991 and completely banned in the Baltic Sea since 2008. This is all aimed at reducing incidental catches of creatures that inhabit the sea, but it does not address what is happening to seabirds that are caught in longlines and gillnets.

The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) says that the data is patchy but what is available indicates that it is albatrosses, shearwaters, petrels, fulmars, gannets, gulls, cormorants, shags, auks, divers, and grebes that are being killed by being hooked on longlines and caught in the nets of gillnets.

These birds are long-lived species and so their populations are sensitive to changes in the survival rates of adult birds.

Many of these seabirds are on the endangered species list. When they are caught on longlines and gillnets far out to sea – where their deaths are not recorded – it confounds efforts to monitor them and to protect them.

European Union Action
This year the European Union has issued a consultation paper that has been open for contributions since June 11th. The window within which to make contributions closes on August 9th.

Pending the formulation of the European Union Action plan, here is a precis of the recommendations of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) for fishing methods which reduce the numbers of birds caught as bycatch. The recommendations are described as combining “a set of very simple techniques which do not restrict fisheries and do not require any expensive equipment.”

Set hooklines with weights so they sink beyond the reach of seabirds as soon as they are put in the water.

Set longlines at night with only the minimum ship’s lights showing.

Don’t dump offal while longlines are being set.

Remove fish hooks from offal and fish heads before dumping them.

Run a brightly-colored streamer line above the water to scare away birds from the fishing line.

You Can Add Your Voice
The European Fisheries Commission action plan initiative states:

The European Commission intends to develop an EU Action Plan to reduce incidental catches of seabirds in fishing gears. The proposed initiative aims to reduce such catches, namely in longlines and gillnets, by reducing as much as possible the interaction between seabirds and fishing gear.

To this end, the Commission invites all stakeholders and general public to express their views on the questions identified in the consultation paper, as well as to present their opinions regarding further actions that could be introduced in a future Commission proposal for an EU-Plan of Action on Seabirds

If you wish to add your contribution, perhaps by suggesting that the recommendations of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) be implemented straight away, you can do so by clicking on the link in the consultation paper under the section headed ‘How to submit your contribution.’

Two Million Seabirds Killed In European Waters is a post from: Quillcards

Related posts:

1. A Pretty Kettle Of Fish And Other Idioms
2. The Paris Floods of 1910

Good News For Quillcards
Lonely Planet – the publishers of the world-famous series of travel guides for the independent traveler – has chosen to showcase our travel articles on its online travel site.

Lonely Planet states on its site, “We sign up the best travel bloggers we can find and publish their articles on lonelyplanet.com.”

The fact that Lonely Planet has chosen to link with Quillcards is great news for us because it increases the exposure of our blog to thousands of new visitors. Of course, our blog amplifies exposure of the images we show in our ecard collection, so we are doubly pleased.

How Lonely Planet Links To Our Articles
The way it works is that we tag our travel articles appropriately. Then Lonely Planet picks them up, and publishes them on its travel site.

So for example, our articles about our experiences in Darjeeling in India are on the Lonely Planet page that highlights that city.

The Badge
If you take a look over to the right of this page, you will see we now have a Lonely Planet badge to show our new relationship.

Clicking the badge takes you to a couple of our articles on the Lonely Planet guide, this time about the holy city of Varanasi.

The Lonely Planet Story
The story of how the Lonely Planet series came into being is interesting in itself.

It started with the long journey of the founders, Tony and Maureen Wheeler, who traveled overland from London to Australia in an old car.

When they arrived in Australia, they wrote about the practical points they had learned from their journey. That became the first of the guides and was entitled Across Asia On The Cheap. Then came the ’shoestring’ series, starting with South-East Asia On A Shoestring, followed by guides to individual countries, so that now there are hundreds of titles in the Lonely Planet (LP) catalog.

We Use Lonely Planet Guidebooks
I first started using Lonely Planet guidebooks before I went to South America. I was very impressed with one of the authors, Geoff Crowther, whose writing seemed to me to be authentic and whose accounts made me want to see some of the places he described.

I wasn’t going to lug the guides with me though, so having read them, I copied maps into an exercise book and made brief notes of places I intended to visit as I moved around.

Tamara started using LP guides when she lived to Korea. It was LP’s mention of the Korean branch of the Royal Asiatic Society that opened up a new world of exploration in Korea for her. Then when she went to Australia from Korea, it was Lonely Planet that guided her around Sydney and Melbourne.

Since then we have both used LP guides on many occasions, so we are happy to hook up with a series that we both appreciate and have been using for a long while.

The Digital World
Times have changed and now travelers can choose the destinations in which they are interested and download pdf versions of the guides – a tempting idea.

Now there are iPad, iPhone and Nokia apps for the city guides and phrasebooks, so the digital traveller can have it all as his or her fingertips.

From personal experience I appreciate having a guidebook to sort through the jungle of information that can greet one on reaching a foreign city.

A long and bumpy ride on a bus followed by trekking around to find somewhere to stay is not the best encounter one can have with a strange city at night.

That’s when a guidebook that treats you as though you can find your way out of the bus station and gives a quick rundown on good places is a godsend. Lonely Planet guides are that kind of guidebook.

Then once the essentials have been covered, you can strike out and follow your nose and leave the guidebook in the hotel room.

Quillcards Blog Chosen As A Lonely Planet Featured Site is a post from: Quillcards

Related posts:

1. The Hay Festival, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, and Darfur
2. Quillcards Festive and Seasonal Ecards
3. The Blog Has Moved
4. New Ecards Added To Quillcards

The ecards from our recent trip to India are now on line.

Organized under the theme of Focus: India, they are set out in categories as diverse as Animals, Architecture, Arts and Crafts, Religion, and the Sleeping Dogs of India.

Here are a sample six of the 115 images in this new section in Quillcards Ecards.

See The Full Range
As well as following the link above, you can always see the full range of our ecards by clicking on the links over to the left under the heading Browse Our Ecards.

What Is In The Range
We have monkeys, cows, and water buffalo in the Animals section, while our Architecture section covers buildings as well-known as the Taj Mahal but also includes the lesser-known but utterly beautiful Itimad Ud Daulah in Agra and the famous ’sinking’ temple on the banks of the River Ganges in Varanasi.

You will find photographs from the dance evening we enjoyed in Udaipur in Rajasthan, as well as of the city’s famous hand-made puppets in our Arts and Crafts section.

Our Religions section covers everything from colorful coverings of Buddhist sacred texts to sadhus on pilgrimage.

Dogs are everywhere in India, and we wrote about the sleeping dogs of Delhi and Agra when we visited these two cities.

Since then we have experienced the not-so-quiet dogs of Darjeeling, who seem to prefer to sleep in the daytime and roam in packs and howl through the night.

Dog Confrontations
We saw several confrontations between lone dogs and packs of dogs.

One confrontation in particular that stands out in our minds took place on a busy street in Udaipur.

The yelping and barking started suddenly with one large, lone dog in a stand-off with a pack of assorted dogs. The lone dog looked worse for wear, with old wounds scarring his flanks – but he stood up to the pack bravely.

The leader of the pack looked in very fine condition and was obviously in command. The rest of his pack were an odd assortment ranging in size down to some very small dogs at the rear of the pack.

The dog that caught our attention however, was the one standing just behind the leader: Smaller than the leader and not as big as some of the others in the pack, he kept rushing forward ahead of the leader to confront the lone dog.

However, he would follow this behavior by turning in an obsequious, appeasing manner to the leader of the pack as though to say, “Well, of course, Your Majesty, I am not challenging your authority. I thought I would just help a bit. Of course, I will do whatever you want me to do. I was just helping you know, not questioning your position. See, I am moving back here behind you. See, look, I have moved back.”

Then a moment later – all overcome with excitement and seemingly unable to control himself – the dog would rush forward to bark at the lone dog, glancing backwards at the leader to see whether he had overstepped the mark again.

Magical India
India is a huge country, made all the more vast by its varied cultures and its tortuous train journeys.

It is a fantastical kaleidoscope, and we hope these images give you a taste of the magic.

The Ecards From Our India Trip Are Now On Line is a post from: Quillcards

Related posts:

1. The Itimad Ud Daulah in Agra, India
2. Delhi Dogs And Agra Dogs
3. Both Ways Around The Roundabout: Traffic In India
4. Travels With A Macbook Air In India
5. Our Valentine’s Day Ecard Collection and Indian Travels

We shoot most of the photographs for our ecards using digital SLR cameras. A few of our photographs are, however, shot on film and then scanned.

Whichever method we use to capture the photographs though, the aspect ratio of the images we use for our ecards – that is the length of the long side of the image compared to the length of the short side of the image – is 3:2.

Some people think the aspect ratio of an image changes with the size of the photograph. The fact is that if the image is scaled up or down, the aspect ratio doesn’t change. The ratio of the length of the two adjoining sides is the same no matter how big or small the photograph is.

As I said, 3:2 is the image format we use for almost all of our ecards. That includes the new Images Of India ecards that we added to this site recently.

Photographs For This Blog
It’s a different story with the photographs we take for this blog. Here we crop the images in different ways to illustrate a story and to suit the layout of the article. Sometimes we also set the text so that it flows around the cropped photographs as in this article about tea.

Nature Photographs Suit A Panoramic Format
Images of trees and fields suit a wide format because the interesting parts of the image lay more or less in a horizontal line and a panoramic photograph mimics the way we generally look at the landscape.

South Yorkshire Landscape

Orientation
One thing that causes confusion is the use of the word landscape when talking about photographs. That is because as well as refering to trees and fields, etc., it is also used to describe which way up a photograph is oriented.

It is easier to show than to describe.

Both of these blue rectangles have the same 3:2 aspect ratio but one is in portrait orientation and the other in landscape orientation. Of course, the principle works whatever the aspect ratio.

Also, if I were to turn a panoramic image that was in landscape orientation on its side I would get a bookmark.

Same Aspect Ratio - Different Orientation

Large Elements In Photographs
Panoramic images works can also ‘work’ where there is a large element in the photograph, such as a country house set in a landscape. Here is an example of an image that is an amalgam of six images merged in Photoshop. It shows a country hall in South Yorkshire, England set in its surroundings.

The house and its grounds are now owned by the local authority for the benefit of everyone, though it was once a privately owned house in which one family lived.

Cannon Hall - South Yorkshire

The existence of these country mansions makes me think of the fact that in a more equal society the house would never have been built nor the trees planted. On the other hand, everyone can now enjoy the house and grounds because of the inequality that went before.

Website Header Images
The header images at the top of our blog are long and narrow, as you can see.

What you may not have noticed is that if you refresh this page, you will see the image change.

This is because we have a number of header images stored on our server and a new one may appear each time you refresh the page or each time you visit this blog.

Portraits
Long, narrow, panoramic images can look great for landscapes but would look a bit unusual if used, for example, for a studio portrait. Having said that, a panoramic shot that shows the person and also includes some of the background can look good, as Arnold Newman’s 1946 portrait of the composer Igor Stravinsky shows.

Newman posed Stravinsky with his arm resting on his grand piano. Stravinsky is at one end of the photograph and the bulk of the photograph is taken up with the shape of the piano. It is a great example of the panoramic format working well for a portrait.

It’s an unusual portrait because the composer’s head and shoulders occupy only a six per cent of the total area of the photograph. Nonetheless it is a powerful photographic portrait.

Back To The Aspect Ratio We Use For Our Ecards
As I said at the beginning of this article, for our ecards we use the 3:2 image format. It is not just chance that we do so, and in fact the 3:2 aspect ratio has been the most popular format throughout the history of photography.

There is a very good reason why 3:2 is the most popular image format. It is a very good compromise – being neither too long and narrow nor too square – and therefore it suits a variety of subjects.

Aspect Ratios - From Square To Panoramic

The Dominance Of The Three To Two Aspect Ratio
But though it seems to be a good all-round compromise, how precisely did 3:2 become the dominant ratio for film and digital cameras worldwide?

The History Of Film
There is no absolute reason that film had to be in this format, and throughout the history of film there have been many film formats other than this.

None however has been as popular as the 35mm film that has been used by countless millions of people worldwide since the early Kodak and Leica cameras gave people the portability and ease of use they wanted.

In Thomas Edison’s Laboratory
The reason that the format became the most popular may simply be that the earliest roll film made for the new ‘compact’ cameras was in 3:2 format and the momentum grew from that.

That film was made in the 1890s by William Dickson in Thomas Edison’s laboratory.

What Dickson did to make the ‘new’ film for still photography was simply to cut lengthwise down the 70mm movie film stock supplied to him by the Eastman Kodak Company. Then as they say, the rest is history.

Putting It In The Frame
Of course, film is cut into rolls to fit in the camera, so it is the really the size and shape of the metal frame or mask that sits in front of the roll of film in the camera that determines the actual frame size and shape of the photographic negative.

Without that frame or mask, a roll of film is just that – a roll – and the individual frames can be any size at all, so long as the lens will focus a sharp image on it.

After a few false starts and a bit of haggling, the size of the frame or mask was settled on by Eastman Kodak at 36 x 24mm -which is of course the 3:2 aspect ratio because 36 is one and a half times 24mm.

And it is the shape of the frame that is really what we are talking about when we speak about the aspect ratio of the individual photograph recorded on a roll of film.

So for the best part of a century the film that you or I would buy from the store – whether made by Kodak, Fuji, Agfa, Ilford, or any of the other brand names that were once common but of which many no longer exist – would be 35mm film made to fit cameras that produced images in a 3:2 image format.

35mm Film From Kodak And Fuji

The Transition To Digital
Kodak, Nikon, and Canon were among the earliest manufacturers of digital cameras for the mass market. They already made film cameras so it was probably a matter of simple economics for them to make digital cameras that used the parts they already used in their film cameras.

Or perhaps they simply decided to stick with the 3:2 aspect ratio that people had become used to.

This aspect ratio is used in the dSLR (digital Single Lens Reflex) cameras we use and have used here at Quillcards – the Nikon D700, the Nikon D60, and the Nikon D200.

And that is why the photographs for the Quillcards ecards are in the proportions they are. That and the fact that the 3:2 aspect ratio is still a good compromise and suitable for all kinds of subjects.

Compact Point and Shoot Cameras
As digital cameras matured, camera manufacturers recognised that they were free to make camera sensors in any aspect ratio they wanted. As a result, the manufacturers of many compact point and shoot digital cameras have opted for a slightly squarer 4:3 format.

Some manufacturers even offer a range of formats within the same camera. Of course, what that really means is that when the format is changed, the frame masks off part of the sensor.

The compact camera that I use as a digital ‘notebook’ is the Panasonic LX3. It has a standard rectangular 3:2 format sensor but it also has a mask operated by a switch that changes the format to 4:3 or 16:9. It also has a custom setting in its menus that enables 1:1 or square format.

Cropping The Image
Of course once any photograph has been taken it is always possible to crop it to a different format. I took this with a Nikon D200 camera so the original image was 3:2. I isolated the model’s face in Photoshop and cropped it to the 1:1 square format image you can see here.

Square Format Portrait

Where Is All This Leading?
As you may have heard, a large number of Polaroid images were sold at auction by Sotherby’s in New York a few days ago under an order of the court following the bankruptcy of the Polaroid Corporation.

Among those sold were Polaroids of and taken by some famous photographers and artists such as Ansel Adams, Yousuf Karsh, William Wegman, Robert Frank, Andy Warhol, and Chuck Close.

If you are not familiar with the work of Chuck Close, he is a painter who paints very large photo-realistic paintings. In the case of the Polaroids though, he made a montage of his own face built up from a number of Polaroid photos.

Polaroid photos have a very recognizable shape. They are more or less square, but set within a frame that has extra depth at the bottom – all of which gives the shot a particularly attractive ‘finished’ look.

With the sale of the Polaroid Corporation to PME, the future of Polaroid as a brand is uncertain but if you are interested in Polaroid products, the Impossible Project is a good place to look for them.

From Polaroid To Poladroid
Now there is an application that enables anyone to take a digital image and make it into a Polaroid lookalike. The software can be downloaded from the Poladroid website.

I shot this photograph in India on the banks of the river Ganges at Varanasi. I shot a normal 3:2 image with a Nikon D60 and Nikon 35mm AF-S lens. Then I put the image through the Poladroid application, and this is the result.

The Lowdown On Photographs And Aspect Ratios is a post from: Quillcards

Related posts:

1. Framing Photographs
2. Nikon D700 and Nikon D60: Comparing Image Quality
3. Nikon D700: RAW and JPEG Files Compared
4. The Care of Photographs
5. Sculpting with Light in Photography

Stupa At Sarnath

Buddha’s Religious Teachings
Having adopted the life of a religious master from the age of 35 until his death in 486 B.C. at the age of 80, Buddha taught the ‘noble truths’ that the craving for pleasure and the avoidance of pain leads to existence and suffering.

To get out of this cycle, Buddha stressed, one must strive to take a middle path between indulgence and denial. He preached that to attain that desired path, one should strive to behave with correct views, intentions, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration.

Buddha As The ‘Lord Of The Deer’
There are a number of different claims about where the name of Sarnath for this deer park was derived, with one of them explaining that one of Buddha’s titles is ‘Saranganath’, which means ‘Lord of the Deer’.

As the story goes, Buddha as an enlightened being took the form of a deer and offered his life to a king to take the place of the doe that the king was planning to kill. The king in turn was so moved that he created the park now known as Sarnath as a sanctuary for deer.

Sarnath
The park and the town that has grown up around it is situated 8 miles (13Km) north of the city of Varanasi in the State of Uttar Pradesh in India.

It is reached by road from Varanasi by crossing the Varuna river and traveling along the aptly named Guatam Buddha Rajpath road.

A Peaceful And Pleasant Place
After trying to deal with the constant clamor of staggering traffic in Varanasi, we were delighted to find that the road out to Sarnath becomes peaceful and pleasant.

Buddhist Monks At Sarnath

It was an enormous contrast to the city that lay only a short distance behind us.

The town of Sarnath is small and dominated by a number of temples and by the parked coaches that have delivered pilgrims here from all over the world.

There is also a very good museum devoted to Buddhist artifacts and of course there is the Deer Park where the Buddha taught.

Once inside the neatly trimmed and tranquil park, we saw many Buddhist pilgrims like these robed monks.

The Dhamek Stupa In The Deer Park
Dotted with the remains of buildings among close-cropped grassed areas, the remains of the Dhamek stupa dominates everything in the deer park.

This stupa was built about 1,500 years ago to replace the earlier stupa built by Ashoka almost 750 years before that.

The Influence of Ashoka At Sarnath
Ashoka was the emperor during the Mauryan dynasty who ruled almost all of the Indian subcontinent from 269 BC to 232 BC.

It was he who spread Buddhism all over the country and it was he who built the original stupa at Sarnath.

Pilgrims At This Holy Buddhist Site
The original stupa and its replacement commemorate the Buddha’s life and deeds and contains part of his remains.

Today it is visited by Buddhists from all over the world.

They come to listen to stories about the Buddha’s life, to sermons from this holy site which marks the place where the stream of his teaching first circulated, and just to be in contact with the place where the Buddha taught.

We saw many groups of such pilgrims exploring this area, like these men and women dressed in white who are walking around the base of the stupa.

Pilgrims Walking Around The Stupa At Sarnath

Other Visitors Absorbing The Tranquility Of The Park
We also observed other visitors dressed in everyday clothing who were similarly soaking up the atmosphere about the Dhamek stupa that day.

As you can see, they are sitting with umbrellas to shield themselves from the hot rays of the sun that day:

Sarnath Visitors

Remains From Earlier Times
Although Sarnath is now visited by many pilgrims and other visitors these days, the park actually lay forgotten until 1883 when a British Archaeological Society team led by Sir Alexander Cunnigham, J.D. Beglar and Dr. Rajendralal Mitra meticulously excavated the site and rediscovered the Ashokan stupa beneath the Damekh stupa.

This modern, carved stone inscription stands near the stupa and reads:

“According to an inscription dated 1062 A.D. recovered from the site its old name was Dharma Chakra Stupa. It is perhaps commemorating the spot where Lord Buddha preached his first sermon. In search of the relic casket Alexander Cunningham bored a vertical shaft through its center down to the foundation level and at a depth of 91.4cm [3 feet] he found a slab with the inscription “Ye Dharma Hetu Prabhava Hetu…” written in the Brahmi script of 6th -7th A.D.

Inscription Near The Damekh Stupa

Further below he traced out a stupa made of Mauryan bricks. However, the present diameter of this solid cylindrical tower is 28.5 meters [94 feet] at the base and 33.35 meters [110 feet] in height. Its total height is 42.60 meters [140 feet] including the foundation.

The structure consists of a circular stone drum up to a height of 11.2 meters [37 feet] from the ground above which rises the cylindrical mass of brickwork about 6.0 meters [20 feet] above the base eight niches are provided in eight directions which must have contained images of the Buddha, below them runs a broad course of beautifully carved stones having geometric designs, swastika, leaf and floral patterns combined with birds and human figures.”

Building Details
Here is a detail of the carving decorating one of the buildings in the park. Close inspection showed that the stonework was covered in small patches of gold leaf arranged in patterns.

We learned that some of the gold leaf laid on the stonework is very old, dating back to the earliest buildings in the park that pre-date the stupa itself.

Sarnath Temple Carvings

During our visit, we also saw groups of women rebuilding some of the brick walls of the ancient ruins in the park. All through the park, low walls indicate the outlines of the many buildings that filled the park at one time.

Women Rebuilding Walls At Sarnath

Deer In Sarnath Today
There is a small fenced off area at one side of the park where a group of deer were eating long, red Delhi carrots that a good number of people were feeding them at the time.

The Boy Seller
We had seen those carrots for sale on stalls and stands throughout India.

This time in Sarnath, I noticed several young boys hawking bags of these carrots which had been cut into thin, manageable strips.

I noticed that the deer were chomping down the vegetables with great relish. So I decided this time to buy a bag to feed the deer.

Cross-Cultural Sharing
I went back to the fence and started feeding the animals.

However, I saw a group of middle-aged women who were watching me and other people feeding the deer out of the corner of my eye.

They were shyly smiling at us as they also admired the animals.

Suddenly it occurred to me to share the red Delhi carrots with these visitors. So I turned and motioned to them, since I wasn’t sure they would understand English.

I got a great reception to my pantomime, and soon several sets of hands were politely thrust in my direction to receive the vegetables.

That Circle of Life
As I handed out the carrots, I received something in return – namely a row of sincerely warm smiles, meaningful eye contact with the women in question, and gentle pats of gratitude on my shoulders and arms as well.

And so it occurred to me that everyone in our little group benefited that day under the heat of the midday sun: From the boy who sold me the carrots; to myself who had the pleasure of sharing them with the women; to the women who seemed moved by interacting with me as a guest in their land – and ultimately to the gentle deer, those lovely animals who accepted the food so gratefully from all of us and made our spirits rise at the sight of their beauty.

Deer At Sarnath

References:
New World Encyclopedia
Wikipedia – Sarnath
Wikipedia – Ashoka
Education World – The Buddhist Circuit
Sacred Destinations – Sarnath
The Dhammapada

Sarnath, The Deer Park In India Where Buddha First Taught is a post from: Quillcards

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1. A Package From India: From Cloth To Sealing Wax
2. Both Ways Around The Roundabout: Traffic In India
3. Encountering Elephants In India
4. Delhi: Getting Into Town From Majnu Katila
5. The Itimad Ud Daulah in Agra, India

Vivid Childhood Experiences
The Irish poet Seamus Heaney wrote in his essay on William Wordsworth that Wordsworth as a child “imagined he heard the moorlands breathing down his neck” and “he rowed in panic when he thought a cliff was pursuing him across moonlit water.”

Wordsworth And His Sister Go Out For A Walk
Perhaps this intensity of imagination similarly stoked his creative juices when he and his sister came across a long stretch of beautiful daffodils in bloom when they went out for a walk one day in April 1802.

Creating ‘I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud’
Why is this probably so? Because apparently it was that memory which led to his writing in 1804 his poem entitled I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud.

One Lone Daffodil
Here is one ‘relative’ of those daffodils photographed for a Quillcards Flower Ecard 208 years later this spring by David here in the north of England:

The Daffodil In The Park - Available As A Quillcards Ecard

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud
A masterpiece on the glory of daffodils, Wordsworth’s poem was first published in 1807 three years after he wrote it:

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud
by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: –
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -and gazed -but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.

‘The Spontaneous Overflow Of Emotions’
Much has been written about Wordsworth and his art, of course.

In this classic poem, Wordsworth set his hat on the common daffodil that grows in abundance in England to convey his idea that poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of emotions” and that the subjective experience and the emotions that we feel in such circumstances are crucially important.

Hail To Those Hosts of Golden Daffodils
His poem is set firmly in the English consciousness, which is why every spring when the daffodils make their splash I and many other people think of his “host of golden daffodils” as we admire their luminous beauty set in peaceful country settings.

References:
Seamus Heaney writing on Wordsworth in The Guardian
The William Wordsworth Group at Enotes

The Luminous Daffodils Of William Wordsworth is a post from: Quillcards

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1. William Blake: Sedition In Chichester
2. On the Origins of Words
3. Quillcards Blog Chosen As A Lonely Planet Featured Site

We went to a farm this past weekend where one of the number of buildings dotted around the area is a piggery. It was there that we saw these adorable piglets suckling.

The second photograph here is actually a close-up crop of the first photograph. This way you can clearly see what caught our attention, namely that the nearest piglet is still attached to its umbilical cord indicating that the little critter must have been born only shortly before we saw this.

As you can see, yellow material from the afterbirth is still covering its body.

Piglets Suckling

Piglets Suckling - Close Up

The sight of the piglet hustling and bustling its way in among its siblings to suckle from its mother seemed like a small miracle.

We noticed another pig in a nearby stall in the piggery. As you can observe here, it looked so contented that we simply had to take its photograph.

Happy Pig

Pig Facts
As we read in the piggery, a female who has had no pigs before is called a gilt. This is differentiated from the term sow, which indicates a female who has had piglets.

The gestation period for all pigs is three months, three weeks, and three days – which is quite a nifty number to remember, as I hope you will agree.

Piglets Suckling and The Happy Pig is a post from: Quillcards

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Spanish Bluebells Close Up

By the door of our building there are raised flower beds surrounded by low brick walls, and in one of these a small bunch of Spanish bluebells has sprung up.

I tried photographing the bluebells – intent on adding the photographs to the Flowers section of our Quillcards Ecards – against the plants and shrubs in the flower bed but the bluebells were lost in the confusion of shapes and colors.

It only goes to show how good the eye is at isolating the detail it wants to see.

Even setting the lens with a shallow depth of field, the background was a confusing tangle. So because the camera sees all without discrimination, I placed a large sheet of card behind the bluebells to isolate them from the plants behind.

The Spanish Armada
If you live in England and have any interest in wild flowers, you will have heard and read about the invasion of the Spanish bluebell. It was introduced into this country on purpose but it has run wild and it hybridizes with the English or ‘common’ bluebell, which is now recognized as a threatened species.

When one walks through a bluebell wood, with a carpet of bluebells covering every inch, it is hard to believe that a battle for survival is raging in the undergrowth. However, that is what is happening.

Bluebells spread by seed, so their future is bound up with pollination by bees, about which you might want to look at these facts about bees being in peril.

When I pass the Spanish bluebells growing in the flower bed outside our building, I look at them with mixed feelings. They are very pretty, in shades of pale blue and pink, but I cannot help seeing them as a clear and present danger to the common bluebells of ‘this sceptred isle’.

Not that there is much chance of any seed from the bluebells in this flower bed traveling to the woods.

However, who knows? Maybe a seed or two could become trapped in some crack in the sole of a shoe and be carried 20 miles to Middleton Woods to run rampaging its way through the English bluebells there.

Oh, what a sad irony to be an unwitting agent for the invader.

How To Tell The Difference
You can distinguish the Spanish bluebell from the English bluebell in several ways.

First, the flowers of the English bluebell only grow on one side of the stem. This causes the stems to lean over in a graceful arc.

In contrast, the flowers of the Spanish bluebell grow all around the stem, so the plant grows more upright.

Second, there is the color. English bluebells are a dark, vivid blue. The Spanish bluebells are a pale blue. There are pink variations too, particularly in the cultivated varieties.

Third, there is the smell. Walking in a bluebell wood one smells a fleeting, sweet perfume. In contrast, the Spanish bluebell is said to be almost without smell.

I Bought A Bunch Of Bluebells
It is illegal to pick bluebells from the woods, but occasionally one sees the cultivated variety of the Spanish bluebell for sale in flower shops.

I bought a bunch of cut flowers – cultivated Spanish bluebells that had been grown in England – from the city center market in Leeds.

Spanish Bluebells In A Jug - A Quillcards Ecard

They smelled very different from the smell of English bluebells in the woods. They smell, how shall I put it… well, they do not have the best of smells. Still, they look pretty in the little milk jug.

Technical Details
I shot these two photographs with a Nikon D700 with Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens. I shot the close-up shot of the bluebells at ISO 200, 1/60 second, at f5.6. The photograph is a crop from the full frame. The shot of the bluebells in the milk jug was shot at ISO 800, 1/80 second, at f5.0.

The Nikon D700 can shoot subjects like these without loss of quality at ISO 1600, so ISO 800 at which I shot the ‘milk jug’ presents no problem.

This sceptered isle
The reference to ‘this sceptered isle’ comes from the following:

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

Richard II, Act 2 scene 1
William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)

Quillcards Ecards
We will be adding this photograph to the ecards in our Flowers section within the next week or so. Also, we are a little bit behind with the India ecards, and will have those on the site in the next few days.

Spanish Bluebells In A Little Milk Jug

I See English And Spanish Bluebells At War is a post from: Quillcards

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1. English Bluebells
2. Bluebells In Middleton Woods
3. The English Love of Gardening
4. Nikon D700 and Nikon D60: Comparing Image Quality

Traffic In Varanasi

This scene is in Varanasi, but the traffic is like this in all the cities in India we have visited. I cannot imagine what it is like to work as a rickshaw driver in this heady cocktail of fumes every day for years and years, as many do.

The rickshaw in the photo above is a cycle rickshaw, of which there are many, but there are many more auto-rickshaws.

Auto-rickshaws have one wheel at the front and two wheels at the back with a green and yellow plasticized canvas cover stretched over a tubular metal frame.

A View Of The Cab In An Auto-Rickshaw

Some auto-rickshaws run on a two-stroke mixture of oil and gasoline (petrol) and so add their own piquancy to the fumes. If you are not familiar with two-stroke fuel, just know that it belches out more burnt hydrocarbons than a regular car engine does.

Two-stroke autos are banned in some cities in Indian but apparently the ban is patchily enforced. The latest models from Bajaj Autos of India run on CNG (compressed natural gas) with a back-up petrol system for what its brochure quaintly describes as “limp home”.

These auto-rickshaws have a starter handle. It looks like a long brake handle located at the side of the driver’s seat.

The driver pulls sharply upwards on the starter handle to start the engine. The handle is of course a variation on the rip cord on an outboard motor.

Auto-rickshaw drivers sometimes turn off their engines when they are stuck in traffic. With two-stroke fuel at 60 rupees per gallon, they have to conserve every drop.

When the traffic gets going again, inches count. The drivers have to be ready to dodge into the first available gap in the traffic. That is when you might see the driver pulling hard and hurriedly on the starter handle so he can get moving quickly.

Apparently, four-stroke models (engines like a regular car has) have an ignition switch as well as a hand starter. if that is true then we have seen only one four-stroke auto-rickshaw in all our travels. That was in Varanasi and the other drivers were so thrilled to show this off that they leaned in where we were sitting and demonstrated it.

Driving Styles In India
The auto-rickshaw drivers are incredibly adept at weaving in and out of traffic, coming so close that often it seems you could not slip a cigarette paper between the vehicles.

If you want to get an idea of how close to each other they drive, imagine that you are parking your car in a parking lot. The attendant asks you to put your car as close to the wall as possible. You back out and drive in again, getting as close as you dare.

The attendant asks you to get closer – really close – and you try again. You feel very uncomfortable doing this because you are sure you are going to scrape the wall.

Eventually your car is near enough to the wall to satisfy the attendant. You get out of the car and walk around to the passenger side to take a look. You lean forward to peer at the space because it seems there is almost no space at all between your car and the wall.

Well, drivers in India drive closer than that. And at speed.

Which Way In Agra
It was in Agra that we had our first experience of how drivers negotiate traffic circles (roundabouts).

They do not go clockwise; they do not go anti-clockwise. They go both ways around the roundabouts. Some go this way and some go that. It is all a matter of choosing an exit point off the traffic circle and weaving a route through the traffic.

Watching from the sidewalk as the drivers negotiate their chosen route is one thing. Sitting in an auto-rickshaw watching cars, bicycles, motor bikes, trucks, and pedestrians zooming up and flying by is another thing entirely.

As you get more used to it, your hand relaxes its tight grip on the framework of the auto-rickshaw, but you move your body a little bit away from the side of the vehicle – just in case.

We read accounts of traffic accidents in the newspapers. Nearly all of them involve people crossing unlit streets and roads at night. We have hardly any reports of other accidents.

Given the number of drivers and the poor protection offered by most vehicles, I would have thought the newspapers would be full of reports if the accident statistics were high.

If this anecdotal evidence is correct and there are not many accidents then it is a testament to the skill of the drivers – because nothing else can save them.

A Final Thought
I am well aware that I am observing the state of the traffic in India through privileged Western eyes. I know that many people in India do not have the luxury of deciding that the situation is too difficult or the traffic pollution too much for them to bear.

Both Ways Around The Roundabout: Traffic In India is a post from: Quillcards

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1. Impressions Of Bundi
2. A Package From India: From Cloth To Sealing Wax
3. Sarnath, The Deer Park In India Where Buddha First Taught
4. The Itimad Ud Daulah in Agra, India
5. Cacophony And Calm In Delhi

Indian Elephants Made From Papier Maché

Seeing Elephants
Spotting elephants walking in the road is not the norm for a Western woman like myself.

However, I am happy to say that I have now experienced that phenomenon in India.

Marriage Partners
Getting married in India means that the bride’s family gets out the great guns, and that is what led to my first sighting of an Asian elephant swaying down a neighborhood street.

Made up for the occasion with white markings on her face and body, she was accompanied on a street in Udaipur by a group of musicians decked out in red and white.

Gracing The City of Lakes
Also known as the romantic ‘City of Lakes’, Udaipur is located in the state of Rajasthan in western India and its ambiance provides a lovely setting for tying the knot.

So although the bride and groom were not on the scene yet, these other participants were there in anticipation of the big event.

Indian Wedding Elephant

Standing back a bit in the street, David took another shot of her being given a pep talk by her handler. As you can see, her name is Ranu. And as her handler explained to us, she was wonderfully decorated to participate in the wedding festivities.

Ranu - The Indian Wedding Elephant

Seeing A Mom And Baby From An Open Jeep
Several weeks after this, I spotted elephants on the path beind us – but this time it was from the back of an open jeep. I had never traveled about in such a vehicle before, which made eyeing pachyderms all the more fun from its vantage point.

The setting this time was in Rajaji National Park. The park is a tranquil area of scrub and forest covering about 300 square miles (800 square km) in the foothills near the holy town of Haridwar, which is located where the Ganges becomes visible as it flows down from the Himalayas.

As you can see, this time what I saw was an Asian elephant mom and baby out for a stroll in the middle of a lovely afternoon:

Elephants In Rajaji National Park

Lucking Out
There were four of us were in the jeep that day – David, our guide, another man visiting the park, and myself.

The weather was sunny and mild. Besides being fortunate with the weather, at the end of our ride our guide told us we had also lucked out because we had seen about fifteen wild elephants besides this pair.

Wet Versus Dry
Apparently many people go to the park in search of elephants but they never see any. Our guide explained that this is especially true when there has been rain.

Why is this so? Because when it’s dry, the elephants in the park congregate at waterholes. The guides know those waterholes, and so they can drive tourists straight to them.

However, when it rains, the elephants can drink from many areas in the park.

That is why we were doubly lucky to see elephants as we did because it had rained just the day before.

Spotting A Woebegone Fellow
Through his binoculars (and too far away to be photographed), David also saw a makna, as the perpetually sexually frustrated elephant is called.

David called the animal to the rest of us in the jeep, whereupon we all leaped for our own binoculars to view the poor creature.

Maknas – Unfortunate Elephants Who Never Mate
Now why are maknas in such a sad state, you may wonder?

Well, maknas are bull elephants without tusks. Because of this, female elephants find them unappealing and they will not mate with them.

To rub salt into the wound, these poor maknas have the unfortunate distinction of always being in must.

What Being In Must Means to Elephants
During must, the temporal glands of adult male elephants become swollen. They exude a strong-smelling liquid that is rich in testosterone, and this liquid runs in rivulets down the sides of their heads. The must is, of course, designed to attract female elephants.

Males are very aggressive as well as being sexually active during this must season.

How Maknas Exhibit Signs Of Perpetual Must
For the maknas, must never ends and they never mate. Perhaps one saving grace is that many Indian mahouts (elephant trainers) believe that maknas have a milder form of must than tuskers (male elephants with tusks) do.

You can tell a makna because he’s large like his fellow tuskers but without the tusks. You can also spot the potent fluid running in rivulets from the gland on the side of their head as we did during our visit to Rajaji National Park.

No Relief In Sight
Because maknas are noted for being dangerous because they are always suffering from their rampaging hormones from which they get no relief, our guide went into alert mode and readied our jeep into gear so he could reverse out of danger.

Luckily the makna did not come any nearer to us, and instead he continued on his way.

Teatime, Elephant Style
At the end of our tour, our guide took us to visit his relatives who lived just outside the boundaries of the park.

They had several rescue elephants whom we had the pleasure of seeing, including this tusker who was having an early evening snack consisting of a pile of whole wheat flat bread called ‘roti’.

Indian Elephant Eating Roti

Elephant Destinies
This animal seemed happy with his lot, which gladdened our hearts since we had felt so bad for the sad-looking makna whom we had seen less than an hour beforehand.

And so once again we saw how life does not deal a fair hand to everyone, including in the Asian elephant world in India into which we had had some fascinatingly diverse glimpses.

Encountering Elephants In India is a post from: Quillcards

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1. A Surprising Sadhu In Haridwar In India
2. Dangerous Drains and A Magical Cultural Evening In India
3. Sarnath, The Deer Park In India Where Buddha First Taught
4. A Package From India: From Cloth To Sealing Wax
5. Both Ways Around The Roundabout: Traffic In India

Watching Sadhus

Sadhus are always interesting because they have cast off the normal obligations of life. As with our earlier encounter with them they are always visually interesting and exotic.

I took this photograph in Haridwar in the state of Uttarakand in the north west of India during the Kumbh Mela (Hindu pilgrimage meeting) that took place there this year.

Pilgrims from all over India come together at certain locations at auspicious times in order to bathe in the River Ganges. The locations in which they gather have their origin in the mela or pot out of which four drops of the elixir of immortality fell to Earth. One drop fell at Haridwar.

As I was taking the photograph, I wondered whether these men were what they seemed.

Sadhus are a kind of perpetual Hindu pilgrim. They follow a life centered on the pursuit of enlightenment or moksha and the rejection of family life and social obligation. Bathing in the Ganges at propitious times is part of that life.

They are obliged to live simple lives with few possessions and with simple tastes in food. They must live without working, and therefore they are dependent upon the generosity of others.

The orange-colored garments that the men in the photograph are wearing are common to most Hindu pilgrims and sadhus.

Fashion
Fashion and custom have changed so quickly in the West in the past few years that it is no longer possible to say that any style of dress is outlandish to the point that it wouldn’t be seen on the street.

Still, a troop of men dressed like this would be quite something if seen here in England. Perhaps a group of monks in their religious habits would be the equivalent, but hardly as remarkable to Western eyes.

However, whereas becoming a monk in Western society inevitably involves joining a religious order, anyone who chooses to renounce worldly endeavors in search of enlightenment may become a sadhu.

There are religious orders to which seekers after enlightenment can attach themselves and there is a long tradition of the teacher or guru, but a person can become a sadhu without any attachment to an established order or to any person.

Huge numbers of pilgrims gathered for the 2001 Maha Kumbh Mela or Grand Mela in Allahabad – some reports said that 60 million people attended.

Certainly we saw endless rows of tents set up in camps outside Haridwar for those devotees attending the Kumbh Mela there this year.

I was looking for answers to the question of how many of those who attended were sadhus or whether all the sadhus in India attend the Melas.

I asked Dolf Hartsuiker, author of a terrific website called Sadhus and Yogis of India for his opinion and he kindly replied, saying:

As you said yourself: It’s very hard to say who are the ‘real’ sadhus. If you take this to mean those who are members of the ‘official’ akharas, the number is rather small – a few tens of thousands at the most.

Apart from these there are quite a few non-affiliated ‘holy’ men and women. Their numbers are decreasing.

And, of course, fake ‘holy’ men, swindlers. Their numbers are increasing.

If you take all these together, perhaps a million or so. A very rough estimate.

There were never 60 million lay pilgrims at the 2001 Kumbh Mela in Allahabad (I was there).

These numbers are always enormously exaggerated. Perhaps a few million over a period of 4 to 6 weeks, so not all together at the same time.

Not all sadhus attend the Kumbh Mela – far from it. The actual number of ‘real’ sadhus at any Mela is not more than a few thousand. Mostly the loudmouth, power-seeking types, attend. Not the ’spiritual’, religious-minded.

So I don’t know what the men I photographed were beyond that they were dressed exotically and seemed as though they had given up a settled life. But who knows, because in India there are untold thousands, perhaps millions of people who are traveling some road or other and do not have a settled life. It did illustrate for me how difficult it is to try to understand what is going on when one sees such a group of men.

Were they sadhus, entertainers, pilgrims… who knows.

The Little Girl
Did you notice the little girl standing by the roadside in the photograph at the top of this article, looking at the men?

I didn’t notice her when I took the photograph and it was only when I looked at the photograph on-screen that I noticed her standing there – just watching.

Smile
During the Mela, the main street in Haridwar is a highway for pilgrims who have come into town.

As I was walking along the street, I saw this man. As soon as we saw each other, we smiled. After a moment, I asked whether I could take his photograph and he obliged.

Photograph taken, I watched him as he continued his walk down the dusty street and smiled to myself as I saw him deftly help defuse a brewing argument between a rickshaw driver, his fare, and another family. Then he continued on his way.

Although I only had a brief encounter with him. I trust my judgement enough to think that he was a gentle person.

Hindu Pilgrim In Haridwar

Watching The Sadhus is a post from: Quillcards

Related posts:

1. A Surprising Sadhu In Haridwar In India
2. Encountering Elephants In India
3. Sarnath, The Deer Park In India Where Buddha First Taught
4. Looking Back At Bundi In Rajasthan
5. Relaxing in Rajasthan

Bluebells And Trees

The weather has been changeable – first sunny, then rain, then some sun again and then more rain – all in one day. Then in the late afternoon the sun came out again and we went for a walk in Middleton Wood, which is near Ilkley in North Yorkshire.

The woods were carpeted with bluebells, which looked especially attractive with the sun slanting through the trees in the late afternoon.

For a close-up photograph of an English bluebell showing how the flowers all grow on one side of the stem, see our bluebell article here. In contrast, the flowers of the Spanish bluebell grow all around the stem, so the plant grows upright.

A Carpet Of Bluebells

We will be adding these photographs to our ecard collection within the next week.

Bluebells And Tree Stump

Deep In The Bluebell Wood

Bluebells In Middleton Woods is a post from: Quillcards

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1. English Bluebells
2. I See English And Spanish Bluebells At War
3. Honey Bees: Nature’s Linchpin in Great Peril

And Now For Something Completely Different
The iconic Monty Python’s Flying Circus TV show that aired in the ’60s and ’70s promised viewers towards the beginning of each of its comedy sketches before it set off on its wonderfully crazy path, “And now for something completely different.”

I am reminded of this slogan as I try to describe the rigmarole that my husband David and I went through when posting parcels overseas through India’s postal service.

Making Work For Idle Hands
On the face of it, the Indian postal service with 155,333 post offices is the most widely distributed post office system in the world.

That statistic notwithstanding, however, we got the feeling that the elaborate method for preparing a parcel to be shipped overseas also provides more work in a country where unemployment and underemployment is rife.

Local Ambience At A Varanasi Post Office
To give you a flavor of the area where post offices can be found, here is the street in Varanasi where a branch post office is located:

Rickshaw Driver Waiting For A Passenger Outside Varanasi Post Office

Using Cloth And Sealing Wax
Now to describe how a parcel must be prepared for shipping overseas:

First, the parcel must be covered with substantial white material like cotton or linen. Once the box in question is wrapped up, the material is stitched snugly all around to the box with a needle and thread. When this sewing is completed, the seams are sealed with red sealing wax.

Finally, the addresses of the sender and recipient are written on the material with permanent marker.

The process takes about half an hour from start to finish. On the two occasions that we used the service, it cost us 100 rupees (about £1.20 or $2.25).

This packaging ensures that parcels mailed overseas will not be opened and tampered with en route to the recipient.

Interestingly, the people who prepared our two parcels in this way were not post office workers. They were simply people with their own businesses, offering their services to anyone who wanted to send a package out of the country.

Posting, Rajasthani Style
For example, in the city of Udaipur in Rajasthan in Western India, we were directed to a little stationery store a short distance from Udaipur’s main post office where the owner had signs advertising his service in the entrance to his place.

As he talked with us amiably about his wife and daughter and their and his academic backgrounds, he completed the work and then we asked him to hold it up to photograph:

Preparing An Overseas Parcel In Udaipur - address blanked out for this photo

Selling Paan In Front Of The Post Office
In Varanasi, our rickshaw driver pointed us towards the man who could help us.

We spotted him near the trees with some men around him since he was selling paan, which he himself chewed continuously.

If you look to the left of the seated man (who just happened to be resting in the area at the time) and in back of the standing motorcycle and bicycle in this photograph, you will see the makeshift stall with the ingredients for paan:

Paan And our Package In Varanasi

Are You Curious About Paan?
In case you are wondering, paan is the Hindi word for the betel leaf with various fillings that is traditionally chewed in India and South East Asia. The concoction is chewed for various reasons, including to cleanse the palate, to freshen the breath, and to help with digestion.

As you walk around the streets and roads in India, you will see many dark red stains where paan chewers have spat out the mixture after exhausting its flavor. Paan is also offered to guests and visitors and at social events – where spittoons are available.

The most common types include betel leaf filled with tobacco and a range of other fillings including the nut from the areca palm, coconut, dried fruit, rose petals, and fennel seeds.

Back To That Package Of Ours
Taking time off from selling his paan, the man who helped us made our parcel suitable for posting overseas can be seen in the sequence of photographs that follow.

In the first photograph, he considers how much fabric he needs for the box and wraps it accordingly:

Wrapping The Parcel In Cotton Material

In the second photograph, you can see that he has already stitched up the material all around and he has started pressing red sealing wax along the seams of the box:

Putting Sealing Wax On Our Parcel

In the third photograph, our completed parcel is now ready to be sent overseas – that is, minus documentation which we later completed and which was attached to the box before its final dispatch:

Our Package In The Post Office - the address is blanked out for this photo

And there you have it: The whole kit and caboodle of what it takes to send a parcel overseas from India, the 21st century notwithstanding.

A Package From India: From Cloth To Sealing Wax is a post from: Quillcards

Related posts:

1. Both Ways Around The Roundabout: Traffic In India
2. Travels With A Macbook Air In India
3. Sarnath, The Deer Park In India Where Buddha First Taught
4. Dangerous Drains and A Magical Cultural Evening In India
5. The Itimad Ud Daulah in Agra, India

Lambing At Hurries Farm

This photograph of ours has been featured in the 2010 issue of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Visitor Guide, which is published by the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority. The publication is distributed throughout the region and is available at tourist information offices and local libraries, as well as at the National Park centers.

The photograph shows David Wellock at Hurries Farm in the Yorkshire Dales National Park helping one of his ewes to bond with its newborn lambs. David and Wendy Hoare run the farm where they raise Aberdeen Angus cattle as well as rearing sheep.

We saw the lambs being born only a few minutes before we took this photograph, and in fact we spent an hour or more there, taking a whole series of photographs showing the whole gentle business of birth from beginning to end.

The sheep in the background of the photograph are all expectant mothers, so the hormones in the barn are quite heady. Therefore, the farmer encourages the mother sheep to get close to her offspring so that she gets the correct smell. Then she will bond with them properly.

The ewes were all sired on the same day so the farmer knows that if he brings them all into the barn, he can watch over them all as they give birth over a very short period of a day or two.

It’s a tough and tense few days for the farmer.

The Guide In Print And Online
The National Park Visitor Guide gives details of the events taking place in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, events that include walks, talks, and courses, as well as farm visits.

As well as the print version, there is also an online version – so if you want to catch up on what there is to see and do, click the link for the details: Yorkshire Dales National Park Guide 2010.

You can read more about our visit to Hurries Farm in this article, and I suggest you take a look to get a more complete picture of life at Hurries Farm.

The Yorkshire Dales Visitor Guide Features Our Photograph is a post from: Quillcards

Related posts:

1. Newborn Lambs in Spring
2. Sheep in the Yorkshire Dales
3. Beatrix Potter and Herdwick Sheep
4. Sheep, Farmers, And The Great Yorkshire Show
5. The Bronte Parsonage, Haworth, England