FIRE WALKING CEREMONY – Another roll on Kodak TMZ3200

Devotees waiting outside the temple

You can read more about the Fire Walking Ceremony in my post from 2014 (here). In short it is a Indian festival honoring the Hindu goddess Sri Draupadi, who is the wife of the five Pandava brothers who walked on hot coals to prove her purity.

Devotees waiting outside the temple

Devotees go through a purification period and on the day of the festival they walk from Little India where they get blessing and protective amulets to the SRI MARIAMMAN TEMPLE in Chinatown where they walk through the coals of the fire pit. After this they go at the back of the temple where they discard they protection and offer to the god the beads necklace they wear since the beginning of the cleansing period.

Devotee entering the temple

This is the 3rd time I am going to the festival. As I mentioned in my last post, total respect to the devotees. I went in the evening as usual with my friend Matte Lim.

Devotee entering the temple

This is my second or third roll of this film. The first attempt was so so. This is supposedly a new film, replacing the old TMZ 3200 discontinued in 2012. I think the film works well for scenes with good contrast and some lighted parts ; if your scene is grayish you wont get much on the picture.

Devotee entering the temple

It was night when I attend the fire-walk festival but both places where I was had some heavy lights on parts of the scene.

Devotee entering the temple

The M6 is great for focusing in the night, even with my ageing eyes, also the metering is quite ok. 

The fire pit (Heavy back-light fooled the meter)

Most shots are done with 50mm Cron (v 5), maybe some with the 35mm Cron (Asph v2), as I swapped the lens between teh M6 and M262 at some point.

Devotee removing his beads necklace

Offering the beads necklace

Processing was done by the usual lab and scanning at home with the Epson v800 , scanning is easy.

 

I like the grain, which is quite limited and pleasant imo (but my wife does not).

The 3 next pictures are my favorites.

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The return of the fishermen – Fort Galle – Sri Lanka

While in Sri Lanka I missed the fishermen on stilts, which can be found in many places along the coast  and actually not too far from Galle (pronounce Goal). I have been warned by different people that the are mostly doing for the tourists now, as my guide put it, they do it for real and may not be here when you go there, or it’s just for the show. Anyway I would not have mind taking a few shots for a few rupiahs, but I just missed the show.

However when arriving in Galle I noticed that there are quite a few fishing boats along the shore and I went for a stroll on the morning of our departure for Colombo. This is just outside of the walls of the Fort when to the east. Just 10 minutes walk from the Amangalla hotel (see my TripAdvisor review )

Fishermen return from the sea with fish when they are lucky, here are some of the catch.

I was a bit stressed to have wandered away before the imminent departure so I did not pay too much attention at my shooting : fatal mistake.  Only the first picture is ok grade I think, but I like sharing.

Wassup? Or the art of the random shot

Wassup?

During these holidays I made more than 60% of the pictures with the 50mmF1.8D. This is probably my cheapest lens, but the most useful. Because we made a long trip by car. and because I was not driving I have plenty of opportunities to make some “random” shots from within the car. I mounted a circular polizer and a hood on the lens to minimize reflection and got a few nice pictures. I was helped by the fact that we were rarely over-speeding and by the nice weather which allowed to use high speed.

Camera:Nikon D700
Lens:Nikkor 50mmF1.8D
F5.6 1/1000s Iso200