March 7, 2010 — Last weekend, I received an email with the subject line “Holi Shit!” from my friend Ashwin. He was referring, of course, to Holi, the grand festival of colors that Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and others celebrate to welcome spring. The tradition involves throwing dye, baby powder, and colored water at each other to “chase away the winter grays.”
And what a springtime day it was. Sunny. Warm. Miraculous.
Half a roll of Kodak Portra VC 160 film to cover Disneyland, Bergamot Gallery and the Getty Villa.
The Getty Villa, Pacific Coast Highway
It’s not everyday that I’m bringing my big camera to the grocery store. In fact, I’ve lived in New York City for almost a decade and never had the impulse to snap a photo of the Brooklyn Bridge or the Statue of Liberty. I find myself taking photographs to document experiences, not filling a mandatory checklist of sights to see or brag about the places I’ve been to. I’m not saying this is neither good, bad or even intentional; it just works out that way.
So, there I was at the Hawaii market — which is actually a Vietnamese market — in the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles with my parents taking pictures of packaged items in the frozen foods section.
The Road to Bulungula Lodge, Wild Coast, South Africa. (24 total images, 1 video)
“Rufus is a very strong man,” says Maya, a local Xhosa woman we just picked up from a village on the Wild Coast of South Africa. “Even in his old age of 80 years he is still able to procreate and have many children,” she says.
We’re all headed to the Bulungula Lodge where Maya works and we’ll be visiting. Rufus is our driver.
Of all the things I miss about Africa, I miss being on a safari the most. While at Kruger National Park in northeast South Africa, Kelly and I operated on “animal time.” We had established a solid routine of getting up at 3:30 a.m., brewing coffee, and as the first light appeared, drove to a nearby watering hole to watch the animals come out.
We parked the car. Sipped on boxed wine. Took out our cameras and binoculars and watched hippos, alligators, buffalo and impala share the same drinking hole, all the while keeping an eye for predators. A British family from whom we had borrowed sugar for the coffee gave us the tip that there had been a lion kill — the pinnacle of all thrills for safari-goes — at this same spot four days ago. Trackers spend entire lifetimes without seeing a proper lion kill. So we kept our fingers crossed and used our peripheral visions to scan the savanna for any movement, the slightest twitch, the perking of an ear perhaps. Intensity and expectation could not be any higher. I understood why people paid good money for this. How lifelong addictions were formed.
