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vol. 1 iue 1

march 2006

hotoblogs magazine Volume #2 • Issue #1 Contact the Editor: [email protected] www.eggplantwmayo.com

Cover Photograph by Ulrich van Stipriaan http://fotos.visitdresden.net/

Contributing Editors:

Sandip Debnath

http://www.pbase.com/sandipd

Jackson Ellis

http://dofk.retiform.net/

Ulrich van Stipriaan

http://fotos.visitdresden.net/

Maile Lani

http://www.mailelani.com/

Massimo Marengo

http://ornitorinko.org:8080/blogs/max/

Nitsa

http://thestreets.typepad.com/

Add a Photoblogs Magazine Link Button Subscribe to Photoblogs Magazine Magazine Home Page This magazine is best viewed with a resolution of 1680 X 1050 for large screens, and 1024 X 768 for screens 18” and smaller. All photographs and text in this magazine remain the original property of the author. If you are interested in purchasing or using any of the images found in this publication, please contact the photographer directly. Reproduction of any material from this publication without written permission is prohibited.

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march 2006 Editor’s Note: Dear Readers, It was twelve months ago when I published the first issue of Photoblogs Magazine, and now, six issues later, I am still having fun with this project. I had no idea one year ago what this magazine would evolve into, but as the publication grows, and I continue to make new friends and acquaintances from every corner of the world, I am quite pleased to keep bringing you the work of these talented photobloggers. Of course, one big change since the last issue of the magazine is that I wiped clean the list of over 800 subscribers, and have requested that our faithful readers re-subscribe for a monetary fee of their own choosing. If you enjoy the magazine, and have the means to do so, I invite you to subscribe here. The funds simply go to offset the costs of bandwidth, hardware, software, time spent on this project, and of course the cost of the adult beverages consumed in said task (plus, for no extra charge, every subscriber gets his/her own splash page, interview, and a chance to be one of the weekly featured Subscriber Spotlights...what a deal!). I thank you in advance. Of course I’d also like to extend my thanks to Sandip, Jackson, Ulrich, Maile, Massimo, and Nitsa, without whose excellent and inspired international work there would be no magazine. Our travels in this issue take us from India to Korea, Germany to South America, and then north to Canada. As always, it is my sincere hope that you continue onto the personal photoblogs of our esteemed contributing editors to enjoy more fully the scope of their art. I would also like to congratulate Andrew, Kurt, and SX for winning Nitsa’s Photoblogs Magazine Photo Challenge this month. Be sure to download the pdf version of the magazine if you’re interested in a more traditional periodical reading experience (and compliment Ulrich on his own spread design and layout). Please check your email in mid-March for the next call for submissions for the May issue, and consider puting words to your photos and becoming part of our community. Best Regards, Matt http://www.eggplantwmayo.com

Migrated Workers in India by Sandip Debnath http://www.pbase.com/sandipd

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Retracing the Familiar...and Unfamiliar by Jackson Ellis http://dofk.retiform.net/

The Return of a Baroque Church

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by Ulrich van Stipriaan http://fotos.visitdresden.net/

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There is Evidence of Man by Maile Lani http://www.mailelani.com/

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Deserts, Mountains, and Telescopes by Massimo Marengo http://ornitorinko.org:8080/blogs/max/

Photblogs Magazine Challenge

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hosted by Nitsa http://thestreets.typepad.com/

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march 2006

hotoblogs magazine

them. And I got surprised when I came to know about them in this news channel. Suddenly it came to my mind that I need to talk to them or may be I need to be with them and understand their difficulties, their problems and their life. And one morning I met Suraj, a young worker from Bihar in a local branch of In a country of more than billion populations, a large number of a Bank. Suraj means Sun people get migrated to the other part of the country every year in Hindi. He came here for for job and daily living...Here is a different story of those people. earning money for his family, for his single membered family, his only mother. He on one of the most popular part of India to get a job so pany was going on... I see by Sandip Debnath asked me to fill up a form them everyday when I go that they can live their life. Indian TV News Channel for work; I see them every- for making a bank draft for called NDTV. The person It was a weekend eveday when I come back too... his mother. Obviously he Maybe a coincidence, I was from Orissa, one state ning and the time for me does not know English, he a group of people go on was just thinking about the of India; it was shown that to sit back at home and has no education backpeople working near by my my way. Sometime I hear every year from Orissa a relax, and without any atground at all, He can only them what they are talkoffice where another big substantial amount people tention, I was watching an make his signature, and it construction for an IT com- ing, sometime I just ignore interview of a village person are migrating to the other

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was not possible for him to go for education because from his earlier age he started earning money for his family. I met him and he gave me some thought obviously. I met him later at the construction site and talked to him for a long time. And I got know so many people who migrated from other states and are working here. I went to their place so many times after that to learn their lives. But why they are called migrated worker ? Why do they migrate from their own place to other places? I just wanted to dig the truth and started talking to them to find out the answer... Poverty and migration always have the correlation

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march 2006 state itself but what about thousands of people like that? They need work; they want money to live their life and let their families live as well. And there is no second thought to leave their houses and village for searching work to the neighbouring states; may be in the construction sites or working in a hotel or Brick Kilns, or weaving or even rickshaw or cart pulling jobs. And this is not a new story, its being repeated every year since 1965.

in India. Most of the people are getting migrated to the other part of India from the beginning of winter season; may be October or Novem-

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ber. This kind of seasonal migration has become the integral strategy of their livelihood for sometimes now. Thousands of people

But what happened after they get migrated for their job here?? Suraj, whom I met for the first time, left his get migrated every year for home last year. He does not have any permanent working as daily wage labourers for their basic need address here. He roams here and there to search of living, for food. some work in the construcAfter the harvest, usually tion sites. He earns very less amount, may be 70 beginning from winter, the villagers who were engaged rupees in a Day. But he still has a responsibility to send in paddy field become jobsome amount of money to less. I talked with a group of people here, and I came his home. His mother will to know most of the people be waiting for his money. He has a home to look after used to plough in the field too. and crop food. Hardly they will have some opportuniPrakash has come from ties to do at that time. But another part of Orissa. He how many days they can stay like that? Sitting idle in is middle aged person. His home? Some of the people family stay at his village may get work in their home still. His wife and one son will be waiting for him to re-

turn after his work and with some good money for them. He misses his family very much while staying away from them but he admits he can do nothing better than this. And this is the situation for every year. So his family has admitted the fact. The lives of these sea-

sonal migrated labourers are miserable in every respect. They do not have a proper place for stay here. I saw their make shift homes (called Jhopdi in local language). They make it with the raw materials used for the construction site mostly. But it is just a place where

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they can go after they finish their work. It is not a place for sleep at all. I saw some of them sleeping even another side of the construction site itself. I asked them

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march 2006

why they stay like that for this whole period? The answer was simple though. They cannot just concentrate on one construction site to work , may be hardly

that takes two months , but then what about the rest of the time ?? They need to move to other sites for work again. So they do not make any permanent residence in one fixed place. The nearer you are to the work site the more you can get a job.

need for the employer and the labourers here. The rich industrialist or the contractors need cheap and skilled labours and the poor village people need money at the wrong season. And the middle man acts a role between those two classes of people and gets money And there is another from both sometime!! And problem with those people even from the poor labourhere. And the name of the ers. Sometime the middle problem is called “Middle man gives loan to the laman”. The roles of the bourers when they need it middle man is to herd the and in return the labourers labourers and organized work for the middle man them into small groups and just without getting the right send them to different desti- amount of money from the nations and that is a mutual employers. It is a kind of

vulnerability. The lives of Suraj or Prakash or Rehman Chacha are the victim of this process sometimes. They

have nothing else to do except this. May be Rehman Chacha needed money at the time of his daughters marriage and the middle man had given a loan. It is

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march 2006 About the Author Being there in India, Sandip thinks, photography is not a phenomenon to capture a moment, it is the soul of a frame which you need to show to the people through your lens. Working for a Computer Firm in Bangalore, India; Sandip feels that he is lucky to get the opportunity to observe and learn about the rich culture and religious belief in India, especially in the Southern part. Sandip always tries to find out the human element in his frame, he strongly believes that a picture with out a human element in it is something like a body without its soul. He works with a Canon 350D with him with a standby Canon Powershot G6. You can see his works at http:// www.pbase.com/sandipd. He can be contacted at [email protected].

just not a guess; sometime it is a bare truth. And these ways they are exploited and cause migration.

is concerned they take the same kind of water which is used in the construction work. A truly unhealthy condition. I met one carpenter at After getting migrated the 7th floor of the construcin every respect they start tion site once. It was a suffostruggle to survive. A sufcated place, a very low light focated, dehydrated and condition, my eyes were sheer exhausted place starts burning literally and that guy becoming a part of their life. was working from morning As far as the drinking water till evening. I was just sur-

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prised to know that too. And the last but not the least is minor labourers amongst them. I was going through the government’s action plan against elimination of child labour; and found out that started from 1979 government has formed committees to study the problem and finding out

the solutions. In 1988, the National Child Labour Project (NCLP) scheme was launched in 9 districts of high child labour endemic in the country. Lot of initiatives has been taken by so many NGOs. But still it is really a big problem within them. It is something like they are bound to shape their future in a way which they do

not like at all. I found the life from my perspective; I mixed with them so much and found some different truth too. Some how the have accepted their life like this. They do not have a good insurance policy, they do not have any monitory richness but still the don’t blame to anybody

for what they do not have. They seem to be enjoying their life with small hopes which they think they can achieve. They just hope to see their family smiles; they just hope to see their spouse still love them. And I feel that is the reason why their life is much stronger than ours, so called civilized people.

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march 2006

Life from the outside in Seoul, seen through the perspective of photoblogger, Jackson Ellis. I arrived at Gimpo airport – the not so flash landing port that was in use prior to the World Cup games – on a sub-zero October morning in 2001. The world had just gone through a major and unwanted transformation. The attacks on New York and Washington had shaken up most folk, and made traveling that bit more of a nervous exercise. As an Irish born Australian, minus 15 degrees (5 Fahrenheit) temperatures were the first unfamiliarity to be encountered in South Korea. The second was parades of military police and other security personnel, patrolling the airport, in an unwelcoming fashion. Why here? Why Korea? I reminded myself that my new wife was Korean, and I’d come here to meet her family and friends, and hopefully learn some more about her cultural background. My first significant creative project in Korea was the making of a documentary about the infamous ex-pat magnet of Itaewon. I made this work with a couple of Canadians, and it went on to showcase at the New York Independent

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Film and Video Festival. It was the beginning of great things in Korea. I’d found a couple of creative partners, and there was no stopping us! Unfortunately, both Mark and Andy thereafter returned to Canada, to pursue other things. I put on my thinking cap, and decided to give photography another try. Having been very passionate about the medium in Dublin, some ten years earlier, I’d swung more towards film and video in recent years. Unfortunately, both Mark and Andy thereafter returned to Canada, to pursue other things. I put on

my thinking cap, and decided to give photography another try. Having been very passionate about the medium in Dublin, some ten years earlier, I’d swung

more towards film and video in recent years. I continued to use bulk rolls of black and white film, which I’d sourced in a camera shop in Seoul. Devel-

opment was carried out in a small DIY home lab. I was happy enough with the results, but there was a lack of direction in my work, and with limited funds, it

was hard to show what I’d achieved to the world outside my negative storage shoebox. At the time, digital technologies were becoming

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more accessible, of higher quality, and of course, more affordable. My friends in other countries had experimented with high-end compacts and entry dSLRs, and were excited with the results. I became aware of Pixelpost, and the emerging phenomenon of “photoblogging”. Gradually, I began to see the strengths and exciting possibilities of self-pub-

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lishing digital images on a regular or daily basis. I purchased a digital compact and after some experimentation and familiarity with the medium, began to photoblog. Personally, the practice has been very empowering. It has opened up doors to me, in a creative sense, and has even led to other forms of publishing and ex-

hibition. It would be unfair to talk about my work per-se, without acknowledging the part that photoblogging has played in my photographic advancement. However, with this much said, the images themselves are of greatest importance, and what is behind them: in other words, “Why an image of this, or that? Why not an image of

the other?” In my experience, one can become so thoroughly absorbed in image-making, or creativity, that one loses a sense of reason. It may be only afterwards, if at all, that the artist fully understands the significance and meaning of their activities. That is of course, if the work has any significance above the stream of “ordi-

nary” life. Having fully absorbed myself in image making, for some time; it was suggested to me, by many friends in the arts, that I should stick to a particular “theme” with my work; suggesting that it may have been too eclectic, as a body of work. I resisted these suggestions, and it was always based on the notion that

photoblogging, as a relatively new form of delivery, was not bound by a specific, formal set of rules. It’s as much a visual diary, as it is a means of publicizing one’s work. As such, it follows the ebb and flow of change, change which is present in life itself and the twists and turns that one follows in the course of that life.

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hotoblogs magazine It was sometime in September 2005, when I decided to work towards holding an exhibition in a gallery space, that I began to sense where my friends had been coming from, and the altering track that I had been following with my photoblog. I began re-tracing my steps, in a visual sense, to see if I could find common treads in my own work, threads of ideas which could go on to form a specific thesis, which could then be presented as a closed set of images, in the traditional gallery space. In fact, the exercise of

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march 2006 creating limitations on what I could and couldn’t show was a productive one. I realized that there were certain threads which were running through my work, and began to identify subjects which were important to me, and ones, which were not. This may seem like an obvious discovery, or something that should immediately be known by an image maker. However, above and beyond what I had been doing and had been aware of, on a conscious level, there were other themes, which had not been immediately obvious to me while photoblog-

ging. It seemed that I had certainly been attempting to reach out to my subjects, to identify with them, through the camera, as such. The people who I usually chose to photograph, were somehow isolated, or living through a struggle. The images told of certain isolation, one which is symptomatic of city life. Therein lies a contradiction, where the city is full of people, but many of whom feel acute loneliness and isolation. Actually, in my own feelings of displacement, at being in a place so unfamiliar, perhaps I was attempting

to understand my subjects’ isolation, in relation to my own. I then began considering the causes of this isolation, in a more universal sense. If it is tangible, then there must be a certain cause, or causes for it. Naturally, this is a complex subject matter, and deserves an in-depth discussion: however, in summary of my own personal conclusions, I understand this isolation to stem from political and economic causes. To be more specific, it appears that people have been under increased pressure, and that this pressure mani-

fests itself through isolation. The source of the additional pressure appears to be economically driven, in order to increase profits, and continually create new needs

and desires within people. Therefore, there is often a juxtaposition of media elements and individuals in my work. This is not to state that

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my work rests on a single premise, and that I have sought to explore a single message. It is very possible, in fact, inevitable, that each viewer will bring their own

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march 2006

interpretations to the work, and see things that I have not seen myself. And this brings me to the present. Having re-located to Melbourne, Australia, I now

find myself with a completely new set of parameters to work with. There are a new host of unfamiliar things, being yet again in a new city, a new place. I have decided to leave the name of my photoblog unchanged. “Daily Observations from Korea”, is where a revolution in my own work took place, and despite having moved away from Korea, there is a certain onus, on my part, to acknowledge the personal artistic development, which took place there. I invite you to follow the developments at DOFK, and will continue to update the site on a daily basis.

About the Author continue to engage viewers Jackson Ellis is an Irish born Australia, who recent- with his photoblog images ly returned to his homeland of Melbourne, in times to following an extended stay in Seoul, South Korea. An honors graduate of Visual Arts at Sydney University, Ellis has exhibited his work in Sydney, New York, Mumbai and Seoul, and has been engaged as a street photographer in many of the world’s greatest cities. Ellis’ exhibition, Fragments, will go on to show at Melbourne and Sydney in 2006, and he hopes to

come. You can see more of his work at http://dofk. retiform.net/

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hotoblogs magazine

march 2006 by Maile Lani

There is

Evidence of Man ...but I can’t find anyone to talk to. (Dedicated to David)

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I’m used to living in oversized cities complete with their jam-packed subway stations, smog warnings, and nightclubs swarming with people who just want you to get out of their way. So when I moved far away from all the noise and the clatter, I was somewhat shaken by the idea of being completely alone for the first time in over five years. You see on the one hand I was saying farewell to snow that matches the asphalt, and I was finally able to speak my mind to the conceited people that lived in my upper class neighborhood, but I was leaving, well, civilization. My stilettos and cute party dresses were being traded in for long underwear and anything that would keep me warm, as this is Canada, and the 1920s house we were moving to not only has a bat in the basement but an insulation problem as well. The irony of the situation is that I wanted to move out here and, quite frankly, as far away from Montreal as I could convince my family to go. “You’re going to regret it Maile,” my friend Paul said to me during a phone conversation a couple days before we left. I laughed and he responded, “No, I’m serious,

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you’ll get bored.” I stopped, laughed again, and promptly changed the topic. Now for some outlandish reason the thought of boredom never crossed my mind in the days and weeks prior to the moving decision. Usually, if I ever felt lonely or tired of what I was doing, I could simply pick up the telephone, get in touch with so and so and then wander off to the cinema or a pub or anything to make me feel better. But all of a sudden, I would be 45 minutes away from a proper supermarket,

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let alone a movie theater, and to top it all off I can’t even drive a car! So I went to the library, checked out 4 books, and then convinced myself that I could catch up on my reading before I went back to school in the fall. There I solved my life. The End. Now please keep in mind for future reference that all is always fine and dandy until time starts to chip away at the brick wall you built to shield yourself from the obvious issues that you knew would eventually arise. Prob-

lem with me is that I’m terrified of the dark and silence makes me feel awkward, almost as if I HAVE to say something or everyone in the room is going to implode. I’m used to constantly surrounding myself with people and noises that I know are coming from my obnoxious next-door neighbor, who has his television blaring away at full volume around 2 in the morning. I know that’s my little sister breathing, fast asleep, in the bedroom that I’ve shared with her forever and a day. Even when I’m

by myself and walking down Crescent Street in downtown Montreal, I know that there are people in those bars if I ever wanted to have a conversation with someone. Suddenly I found myself in a big bedroom with only my fish to converse with, and although my family is just down the hall in their respective big bedrooms, I don’t think that anyone would hear me if I stubbed my toe and shrieked “OUCH!” at the appropriate sound level for an injury of that type. It was at this point that

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I started to realize that I couldn’t find anyone to talk to, let alone anything to do. Usually I could just walk into the living room/office of our apartment and everyone would be there, watching television or sending faxes or something. Now I walk

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into the kitchen only to find it spotless, but then I realize that my father’s car isn’t in the driveway. There’s a fire blazing away in the living room, but my mother is taking a nap all the way upstairs. The curling iron is still hot, but my sister’s off

dealing with the every day trials and tribulations of high school... and it’s not just in my house either. I’ll go for a walk and see tire tracks on the ground but can only hear the snowplows driving away in the distance. I see electric poles connect-

ed with electric wires and electric boxes and cables coming from the house, but I can’t even hear an electric hum or see anything even remotely related to electricity such as a Radio Shack or a computer store. It’s too cold and icy to even replace the

light bulb in the wrought iron lamp above the driveway, that decided to burn itself out two days after we moved in. Lights are a beckoning of warmth saying “Hey! Someone lives in this house!”... But now it’s always dark outside. Then, of course, there are barns with rusted locks and tractors complete grass growing not only around them but on the inside as well! Fences and footprints and lights from the dam, but I can’t seem to find a single person when I want to share an off the wall thought with anyone that would even pretend to listen. It’s almost as if I have become a ghost in my own little world. Perhaps everyone can see each other but I’m the only one that

managed to land myself on a slightly off plane of existence where no one but me physically exists. A friend once told me that, after I grumbled something about moving away, when I need a friend I can make one, just like that. What I don’t understand is how I can befriend what I don’t see and how I can amuse myself with what doesn’t seem to exist. I can’t wander around alone in the snow covered fields and forests searching through barns and crawling under fences past the “No Trespassing” signs hoping in vain that by the end of the day I’ll be having a vodka tonic with someone that shares my views on politics and the new spring fashions. But then something funny

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hotoblogs magazine happened, on almost as large a scale as the Grinches heart growing three sizes that day. I noticed the way the moonlight reflected ever so elegantly on the snow, and oh how it sparkled as bright as the diamonds in the jewelry store windows down town. Gradually I started to

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realize that I could see what was making the snow in my front yard glow, and for the first time in as long as I can remember I could actually see the stars and the moon in the sky. Yes the driveway light is burnt out, but why waist electricity when the moonlight works just as well?

It’s not always silent either... I can hear the wind or the rain, and sometimes birds or bugs or coyotes if I listen close enough. I know for a sure fact that the kitchen was cleaned sometime this afternoon, but come to think of it, it’s quite lovely not to have to hear pots clanging around or

the dishwasher noises overpowering the film I’m watching on television. I think I like things just as they are now, evidence of man without there actually being anything to distract me from the one thing that that is more important that parties, night clubs, and shopping... life.

About the Author Maile Lani is a 21-yearold musician/poet/ photographer who currently resides in the frozen north somewhere between the Eskimos and the maple syrup farms. When it comes to photography, she is obsessed with trying to capture the idea of the subject rather than simply the subject itself, believing that, implied thoughts, are infinitely better than direct ones. She has a dog, a fish, and has made part time pets out of the ladybugs that live in her windowpanes, although they periodically venture onto the bookcase as well. One day she wants to write music for films, but for now she simply enjoys writing music for her family and friends. You can see more of her work at http://www.mailelani.com/

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Deserts, Mountains and Telescopes Traveling to the sites of modern astronomical observatories, where the air is thin and the earth touches the sky.

by Massimo Marengo Each time is the usual litany of questions: “What is your business in the US,” “How long are you staying in the country,” “Can you really see the stars from Cambridge?” I always get this last question when the immigration official looks at my Visa and realizes that I am an astronomer based

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in a populous city in New England: how can I see the stars from a place where most of the time the sky is the same color of the orange sodium city lights? In fact, I can’t. Astronomers need dark skies, thin air and low humidity. Cambridge is certainly none of the above, and the only telescope we actually have on the roof of

the Center for Astrophysics is a small amateur scope used for the monthly “Observatory Nights” for the public. Our real telescopes, the large ones, are on the top of remote mountains, in the middle of deserts or in the caldera of inactive volcanoes in the Hawaii and Canary islands. In the last few years technology has progressed

to a point in which many observations can be performed remotely. I can operate the 48inch reflector at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in southern Arizona from the comfort of my office in Massachusetts. Thanks to robotics, and the Internet 2, I can do my job as efficiently as if I were in the control room annexed

to the dome. This is the way we control telescopes that are in the only place we cannot possibly reach:

space, like the Hubble telescope orbiting the Earth, or the Spitzer telescope trailing our planet more than

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15 million kilometers away. But remote observing is not the same as being

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march�������� 2006 the dry landscapes of the US southwest. At 30,000 ft the desert landscape loses its human scale and becomes an abstract pattern of unpaved roads crisscrossing never ending plains dotted by cacti and bushes. From that height, the erosion of seasonal rivers looks like the bite of a giant dragon, flown from the misty mountains far away where the horizon meets the sky. The observatory is near Amado, almost at the border with Mexico, in a mountain range rising there. Sometimes you need simulation, but are formed by a handful of photons that from the desert, home of to be reminded that the saguaros and well tended have traveled through the objects you are observing golf courts. Arizona is depths of space and time are real, as not only a heaven to to tell the story of worlds real as the we can barely imagine. And astronomers, but also the cold air of last destination of a growing there is no better reality the night population of retirees in check than traveling to burning the search of warm weather skin of your the fantastic places where and the cheap medications the great observatories face while provided by the Mexican are built, and lose yourself you are pharmacies on the other admiring the sun rising on outside the side of the border. the Andes at the end of a telescope “Hey, You look like productive night, or drive dome an astronomer!” was the checking the along the panamericana comment of Scott, the road amid endless piles of weather. It aji peppers left to dry under owner of a local limousine is easy to company waiting for me at the sun of the desert. forget that the baggage claim carousel The first time I went the images of the Tucson airport. He alone to an observing trip I appearing was still a graduate student either has a sixth sense on your for spotting astronomers, freshly arrived to the US screen are or he just guessed right from Italy. I arrived in not the Tucson, Arizona, via Dallas, that only an astronomer products of can travel to sun scorched after a long flight over a computer

southern Arizona wearing a GoreTex parka when the temperature is in the hundreds. Scott drives an old Chevrolet Caprice, and wears a musketeer’s hat with an ostrich feather on top. He drove me through the desert, telling stories about the local indian tribe that exchanged ancestral land rights for a gambling license, and

the hotel on the left, built inside the abandoned silo of a minuteman ICBM. Only in America, baby. He left me at the end of the Elephant Head road, at the observatory base camp. From there to the telescopes on the summit there is another hour of four-wheel drive, on a steep unpaved road passing through places with names

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that you would expect in a Clint Eastwood movie: “Devil’s Throne”, “Agua Caliente Trail”, the “Vault Mine” trailhead. As I drive up the mountain, the sun is setting, and my parka suddenly becomes a very good idea to fend off the cold night of the desert. The observatory is home of several telescopes, the largest of which is the refurbished Multiple Mirror Telescope. In its previous incarnation, the telescope was made by six individual smaller mirrors on a common mount. As technology advanced,

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a new telescope was built, with a single mirror 6.5 meters in diameter, one among the largest in the world. The new telescope barely fits in the old dome, like a model boat in the bottle. On the mountain ridge below the summit, there are smaller telescopes and one interferometer, that combines the light from three small flat mirrors mounted on rails to achieve very high visual acuity thanks to its “stereoscopic” vision. My destination in that first trip was the small 48-inch telescope, the

one that is now mostly controlled remotely from Cambridge. As it often happens, I didn’t observe much that time. I spent most of my three nights feeding the 4AM mouse that lives in the control room, and checking the clouds that were hiding the stars from my sight. That’s not too unusual, and it is part of this job being caught by a sudden snowstorm in such unlikely places like the desert of Arizona, or an observatory in Hawaii. Snow in Hawaii, yes, I got that too. But the gamble is worth the bet,

and even a few hours of good weather are enough to provide data that will take months to analyze and understand. Astronomy is an experimental science, and lives off these rare moments in which nature allows us to use the most expensive cameras ever built, attached to even more expensive optics, to investigate the secrets of how the universe, our world, and ourselves came to be. You cannot observe the stars from Cambridge, as I often have to explain to the incredulous US immigration officials, so an important part of my job involves traveling. It can be stressing

some times, but it gives me the chance of visiting many places I would have never seen otherwise. Many of the photographs on my photoblog are memories of

these travels, and tell the stories of lonely mountains rising from the dusts of a desert, and the giant telescopes that we have built on their summit.

About the Author... Massimo Marengo is a professional astronomer based at the HarvardSmithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA). As such, he spends a lot of his time processing images taken with the most expensive cameras attached to the largest optics in the world, capturing a handful of photons that have traveled for million of years just to end up on the screen of his computer. To resist

the capital sin of applying artistic license to these scientific images, he has taken up photography to capture the more mundane subjects encountered during his numerous travels: a landscape in a remote part of the world, the people and the stories inhabiting it. His website sports many photos taken

in these trips; visit him at http://blog.ornitorinko.org.

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hotoblogs magazine

The Photo Challenge March 2006 Hosted by Nitsa

Second place “San Antonio, New Mexico”

march 2006

by Kurt Nimmo Las Cruces, NM “ As we drove through San Antonio, a small town on NM 380, the sun was going down and I saw a reflection on a newspaper vending box outside a store, so I pulled off and grabbed my 35mm Pentax loaded with Fuji film and took two or three shots of the scene. “ - Kurt Nimmo http://ordinaryvistas. blogspot.com/com/pp/

Third place “Woman Hiding In Pine Forest” by by SX-70

First place “New Tidings” by Andrew Esiebo

Ibadan, Nigeria

“I took this photo on Christmas day 2004, at the Aflao Beach, Republic of Togo while on holidays there. I was attracted by the little boys swinging around the Canoe and with the sun arising. It gave me a feeling of the rising of new tidings particularly when it was on a Christmas day.” - Andrew Esiebo: http://www.pbase.com/sleeper55

Submitting photos to the photo challenge Photoblogs Magazine is now accepting entries for its photo contest, which is open to everyone and is free. Winners will have their photo displayed here including a link to their website/photoblog. What am I looking for? · An original photo (your own work) · jpg file no larger than 800X600 and up to 200KB.

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· Creative images of landscape, urban, nature, travel, still life...and anything else. Submit your favorite photograph today (and please, just one photo per contest) as an email attachment to [email protected]. Along with your photo make sure to include: Name,Location, Photoblog/website, Title of image, Comments about the photograph - (include anything you

would like to say about your photo such as location, why you took it or how you took it. In case you are the lucky winner this text will be displayed along with your photo.) Due dates: Submit your photo no later than January 10, 2006 . Winners will be announced and displayed in our next issue on February 1, 2006 .

Melbourne, Australia “(...taken from my diary entry for the shot...) Dear Diary - what’s that saying...’Can’t see the forest for the trees’...? I was out and about and heard a sound of rustling in the forest, a pizzicato snapping of undergrowth, separate and staccato, standing out from the ostinato of the constant ambient white noise of the wind in the firtops...Apart from the trees, I could see nothing specific. Was it my imagination...?...or perhaps the Polaroid 600 film I was loaded up with was affecting me... Unsettled, I snapped in the general direction of the sound and moved on... I am left wondering what she was doing there and why she chose to hide... “ - SX-70 http://www.unktahe.com

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