Barkhor Piety

Walking Prayer

Photo club kicked off again for the year with the first open competition.  I did not end up taking much part last year, and so the intention this time round is to try and be a bit more active.  As it was I put in 3 digital images, in which all three gained acceptance, and 3 prints, where one gained honours; the image above.

"Walking Prayer" was taken as we walked the Barkhor circuit in Lhasa, a busy street circuit that serves not just as a shopping location but also circles the Jokhang temple; reputed as the most important Tibetan Buddhist temple in the world.  Shooting from the hip is a relatively hit or miss affair with plenty of practice needed to first recognise a subject and then get anywhere close to capturing it in the frame.  This is one of my few successes and for me represents the daily role religion plays to the Tibetan people, a suited man going about his business with prayer beads ever present.

Family Prostration

A more extreme display of belief seen on the circuit is the prostration of pilgrims.  This involves lying flat on the ground for every single step taken, and generally not just for the 500m loop but the whole trip from their home, however far away.  It was pretty humbling to see people with nothing involved in such an undertaking, showing incredible devotion and certainty of faith.

The blog is resurrected, of a sort anyway!  It has been many months since the last update which is no reflection of a lessening of our activity but more that the activity has become slightly more common place.  Weekends spent tramping the high country or flicking a fly upstream have become "routine"; which, while a fantastic situation for anyone to find themselves in, is a little harder for me to write about trying to explain the slight differences in each event.  It would quickly get rather dull for us all and quickly lapse into further long periods of inactivity.

Instead I hope to post one or two photos on a more regular basis, perhaps with a little story behind them time permitting.  They may be new photos or older ones rediscovered from my small archive, but either way I am sure to enjoy going through them and hope you will stay with me for the journey.

The Upper Clutha

So, without further ado, first up is an image taken of the upper Clutha river only a few weeks ago.  Amy and I were on a weeks break with Amy's parents and for 3 nights were based in Wanaka.  I managed to sneak away for a days fishing on the upper Clutha river, said to hold the greatest biomass of fish of any river in New Zealand.  Now obviously I failed to catch anything all day, though in my defence the wind picked up and I was forced to spin fish for a large proportion of the time, a technique I had not really used before having only bought the rod days before the holiday.  Either way, I was walking to the pick up point fishless and scratched from bush-bashing when the track climbed and opened out to reveal this spectacular scene.

It may not look like much to you, but to me it reminds me of the rustling branches, the warmth of the sun, the real autumnal feel and of course those fish that got away.  That's the real difficulty I find with critiquing my own images.  I was there, I remember what all my other senses were telling me as the shutter tripped and can't help but relive things a little when I revisit pictures.  Any other viewer relies simply on the light, composition and treatment of the image to feed into their own imagination and so what I may feel is a success may merit little more than a "that's nice" (or worse "OK"!) from an impartial viewer.  I guess I am the only one who really matters, I'm not after all relying on selling pictures for an income, but it would be fantastic if every now and then one of my images resulted in a visceral reaction from the viewer drawing them into the scene.