I have posted many of them here, some on Journal Image. The entire bank of the river next to the burning ghats, was lined with devotee stumps. People offer their prayers & their offerings to Kali here. The priest lives next door. So when its not the time for “puja”, he runs a small school for the street children.

This picture was taken on Nikon D200 with camera mounted fill flash on full power. Since it was noon time, & the subject was primarily white, I had to fill the subject at full power to overcome any under exposure.

I also used a graduated 3.0 ND filter to shadow the sky. The picture is only cropped for easy viewing over the internet.

Once they get comfortable around you, your camera or flash lights will not amaze and distract them any more. For a street photographer trying to get candid shots of children, you have to be patient till they don’t notice you anymore!

This is a candid picture of Suraj, a teenager from Kolkata, who loves to play & dive in the water of the Ganges.

Suraj & his group of friends spend the morning at Ghats of North Calcutta. And they have their own kid’s games too.

Like for example, they would dive and swim to the steam boats ferrying across shores. They would compete from one buoy to another. Thats all these children need to make them smile!

Suraj had a characteristic smile. A perfect “ear-to-ear” smile, and his eyes closes every time he laughs. He posed for me after a dive & could not resist laughing every time the flash went off.

This candid street portrait of a child from Kolkata is taken with handheld Nikon D200 & a wide angle lens.

The picture is taken on hand held Nikon D200 with fill flash and a wide angle lens.

A perfect showman who just found a great way to earn money just by dropping his clothes. And the confused tourists, not knowing what this is all about, is more than willing to shell out a couple of bucks for a picture to carry back home as a souvenir.

The picture is taken on hand held Nikon D200 with a wide angle lens.

Following my experience in San Francisco in documenting Street Musicians, I have started a similar project in New York City too. While most of the usual musicians are still playing in the subways, this group was one of the few that added a nice flavor to the city.

The image is taken on hand held Nikon D200. I did not use flash which could have distracted the musicians.

The lady here takes a quick break from her restaurant work and takes a peek at the afternoon edition of the news paper. The picture is taken on a hand held Nikon 200 on Lexar Pro media card.

While people are spending hundreds for the latest designer clothes on one hand, just on the other side of Times Square, another group of tourists is paying anything between two to five dollars to the naked cowboy’s agent to have a picture with him.

This picture is taken on hand held Nikon D200 on the divider in Times Square.

The picture is taken on Nikon D200 with a wide angle lens on Lexar Pro media.

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There is off course a prize, not apparent if you are new to this environment. It is the satisfaction of an afternoon well spent outdoor in the company of people who love nothing but playing chess!

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The hawker refused to be photographed, so I was just content with taking the pictures of his road side wooden stall. The picture is taken on hand held Nikon D200 without flash.

This picture shows a rickshaw puller resting in the slow weekend. The picture is taken on hand held Nikon D200 without any flash.

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We hope to present candid street pictures, stories, techniques and documentaries from New York City, San Francisco, Boston & Chicago among other cities & metros of US. As in the past, we will also run street projects including street artists, street musicians, body art, street fairs & portraits on journalimage.com..

Please update your bookmark with journalimage.com. The feeds are available on http://journalimage.com/feed/

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Vincent has been playing the pan for over 25 years and about a decade in New York City. He is from Trinidad, but has been entertaining the New York City tourists for over a decade now. On my request, he played the Jamaican Farewell. I had first heard it on the pan in San Francisco by another street musician by the name of Jonathan.

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I shall post more on Vincent in my later blogs. This picture was taken on a hand held Nikon D200 with fill flash & is part of an extended documentary on Street Musicians. Read more here.

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I have used a watermark on the above image. I apologize for the inconvenience but I am using it since the time I found out that Musicnation.com and a few others have violated copyrights & copied my images while being very insensitive to the musicians all in the name of driving more traffic to their websites.

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Taking pictures while driving at high speeds is very similar to taking the picture of a deer running very fast from where you are standing. I have used three techniques for all those pictures.

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1) For pictures where I did not have something in front of me to lock-focus, I set the focus manually at infinity, and set the shutter speed at over 100 for most of them.

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2) For pictures where I had an object in front of me, like a vehicle or a sign post or a high land, I locked-focus and took the picture.

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3) For pictures of landscapes, I again set the focus at infinity and shot through the wind shield.

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All the pictures are taken through the windshield, with the camera held up high enough to avoid the bonnet. Note that none of those pictures have been cropped (they have been re-sized for sharing over the internet). So did I miss any shot? Yes, certainly. There is a certain amount of unpredictability with taking these sort of pictures. But since I have been doing it for long, I could get 8 or more good pictures from 10 gates.

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The camera was Nikon D200 and I had used a wide angle lenses from 17 mm all though 120 mm. The higher the focal length, the better the composition and lesser chance of getting your car’s bonnet in the frame. But that also increases the chances of camera shake. You got to do the balance somewhere in between.

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Since they were all taken from behind the windscreen, I did not use any flashlight. The ISO was held between 100 & 200 so as to get sufficient resolution in case I needed to crop.

Pennsylvania landscape on I-80 @ photoduniya.com

The images on this journey are taken mostly while driving on hand held Nikon D200. More on the trip will come up later on the Travel section of photoduniya.com.

Day 8 was planned to be a rest day as well as to see the city of Chicago. Fortunately, and quite by luck, we found an affordable hotel right on Michigan, about a block’s walk from the Millennium Park. The day had been cloudy with mild wind and temperatures hovering around the thirties.

Millennium Park in Chicago, IL @ photoduniya.com

We spent our day and the evening at Shedd Aquarium, Grant Park and walking along Michigan in downtown Chicago. In the evening the Sears Park, also known as McCormick Tribune Ice Rink, lights up with the decorations from the Christmas and New Year’s celebrations and fills up with eager skaters of all ages.

McCormick Tribune Ice Rink in Chicago, IL @ photoduniya.com

Our day ended at about 9:00 PM CST. Tomorrow we head off east from Chicago and drive through Ohio as close to Pennsylvania.  More on the trip will come up later on the Travel section of photoduniya.com.

We have covered close to 2700 miles now and reached Chicago, IL where we want to rest for 2 nights before heading eastwards again. In the map below, you will see the deviation from I-80 (in pink) where we traveled northwards on I-88 East to Chicago, IL.

Today’s drive had been mostly through Iowa, starting from Council Bluffs in the western end through Des Moines into Illinois. The drive had been strenuous mostly due to the strong surface winds which blew northward at speeds of about 25 mph on an average. It is very hard to keep high driving speeds in such strong cross winds, but we covered the 650 miles in about 8 hours of drive-time.

Iowa landscape @ photoduniya.com

The landscape through the drive was quite monotonous, with wide snow covered land areas lying on either side of the highway. The drive suddenly changed when I-88 East neared Chicago, IL with very high traffic – mostly the office-time drivers. We touched Chicago, IL at about 8:30 PM Central Time. It is about 15 degrees Fahrenheit with wind chill close to 2 degrees. I spent an hour and a half outside with my camera in the city hoping to find some interesting stories.

Night scene in Chicago, IL @ photoduniya.com

The images were done with hand held Nikon D200 with no flash. I shall update the Travel section of photoduniya.com with the more details on the cross country drive from California to New York.

We have covered almost 2100 miles by the end of Day 6 on this cross country drive. That leaves us another 1200 miles to cover before we could reach New York.

The drive through Nebraska had been very nice. The bright sunshine with low cross winds and the almost flat drive across Nebraska made it a very comfortable drive. We were able to maintain an average speed of between 85 mph to 90 mph for most of the time. I-80 however had road work for about 10 miles at the eastern end of Nebraska close to Omaha which slowed us down to about 50 mph for a short while.

Sand Desert in Nebraska @ photoduniya.com

This image was taken on hand held Nikon D200 while driving. I shall post more on the trip and images on the Travel section of photoduniya.com.

It’s day 4 of our trip and it was nice to lay in the bed till noon and get back much of the sleep. We finally made out to the open at about noon and surprised to see the sun peeking through the clouds. Our first drive was a quick one to a pull-out on the WY-22 pass, about 10 miles from Jackson Hole. I wanted to take some vista pictures that i had in mind from driving into Jackson Hole the night before.

Jackson Hole in winter @ photoduniya.com

A lot of my images are done while driving, sometimes at 90 mph, and thus bound to be less sharp. But having a wide angle definitely helps in reducing the shake. The windshield is not often crystal clear, especially in winter with all the rain and the dust sticking to it. I hope to clear out the images in photoshop later.

Jackson Hole on WY-22 in winter @ photoduniya.com

We meandered the afternoon in the quaint town of Wilson and downtown Jackson Hole. The small community here celebrates new year with the festivities of July 4th. With fireworks and food in a small park close to the Jackson Hole hospital. It’s about 6:15 PM Mountain time now, we are tucked in our rooms, getting ready for the New Year’s broadcast on ABC and sleeping the night off for a long 650 miles drive to Laramie, WY tomorrow. The temperature had been about 16 degrees Fahrenheit for most of the day and is expected to be -2 degrees Fahrenheit during the night.

Downtown Jackson Hole ushering in 2008 @ photoduniya.com

More images will be uploaded on the Travel section of Photoduniya.com. To all my readers, best wishes for a happy new year 2008!

After a snowy night before (day 2) and a morning with snow, gusty winds and rain in Salt Lake City, UT, we were slightly agitated by thoughts of road closures. And not having any planned and programmed map, while added to the sense of adventure, also became quite a challenge.

I-15N about 30 miles from Sale Lake City @ photoduniya.com

Taking I-15 north from Salt Lake City, UT for about 215 miles we reached Idaho Falls by 3:30 PM Mountain Time. But to our dismay, route 26 that is to take us all the way to Jackson Hole was closed! We met to road faring ladies in a small pit stop where the board hang saying that we cannot go any further on Route 26 to Jackson. They gave us a new route – to head 40 miles further on Route 20 East and take 33 East to Wyoming. And we did! By the time we reached the pass on Route 33 it was 5:30 PM Mountain time. The sun has just about set and the snow is just starting.

I-15N in Utah about 100 miles from Idaho Falls @ photoduniya.com

Luckily, the pass, though icy, had just opened after a few days of closure due to heavy snow falls, and there was no sign for snow chains yet! We reached Jackson Hole by 6:15 PM Mountain time and moved into the cozy Painted Bear Inn. While I am writing this at 8:50 PM, we returned to our hotel after a hearty dinner at the local Bubba’s, it’s 17 degrees Farenheit now and the weather report shows heavy snow tomorrow.

While I shall write in detail about this trip later on photoduniya, Iam posting a few images from today. The second image was taken handheld while driving through the windshield.

We are on the second day of our cross country winter drive, from California on the West US coast, to New York in the East US coast. It is a total distance of about 3,000 miles, with a minor diversion to Jackson, WY. The map below shows the over driving map.

We have crossed California into Reno, NV on Day 1 and we’ve reached Salt Lake City, UT on Day 2. As I write, it is snowing here and more is to come tomorrow morning as we head out north to Jackson, WY.

 Day 2 snowing in Salt Lake City @ photoduniya.com

Since our hotels have not been booked in advance, we are checking in at any location as fits the situation and the time. I shall elaborate the drive later, but wanted to keep my readers posted on my trip and the location.

Day 1 in Reno, NV in winter @ photoduniya.com

It just started to snow and the flakes were big enough to be caught by the flash light. But that did not stop the new year revelers from trying their luck at the slots. I am carrying only my Nikon D200 and a wide angle lens. I do not have any other lenes or even an additional flash. However, I am able to make a few stops en-route to photograph as much as possible. I shall post the images in subsequent updates.

Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to all!