Barely Breathing In Bangalore (2004)

Over the Holy Week, I had the chance to slow down and reflect (read: I had nothing to do and nowhere to go). I took the opportunity to dig up an old photo set that I used to have on my Fotopic galleries from my three weeks in India in 2004. It was a popular photo set, though I suspect the popularity had more to do with the captions that I wrote or the humor to be found in the photos, rather than the quality of the photos themselves.

It was a refreshing exercise to revisit old photos. It made me cringe to look at the poor, cluttered composition, the uncorrected cyan color cast, the tourist-y feel of the perspectives, and so many other things that I was blissfully unaware of back then. But it has shown me how far I have gotten from days when I shot with a truly point-and-shoot Sony P7 and barely a concept of proper exposure. Out of a set of about 150 photos, I postprocessed and cropped the life out of a handful of photos below. Not bad, coming from a point and shoot, I suppose.

Photos from left to right, top to bottom:

1. The Cathedral of Saint Philomena in Mysore.
2. A red house and a mini (micro?) van on Chamundi Hill.
3. The Sri Chamundeshwari temple at Chamundi Hill.
4. An old man tending to his sores nearby.
5. Two old women by the temple.
6. Nanda the Bull near Chamundi Hill.
7. Gateway to a temple in Mysore.
8. The temple up close; guess who's from out of town.
9. Mysore Palace.
10. Inter-school trivia competitions are big in India; covered on ESPN!
11. You can get a side order of curry with your KFC in Bangalore.
12. Mango vendors on a sidewalk in Bangalore.
13. Cafe Coffee Day is the only drink around in the two-terminal Bangalore International Airport.