I've put a pdf of a selection of images from my Lansdowne Road project about Bombay street people at

Lansdowne Road

The download is 2Mb, so it's a bit long, but I hope you enjoy it.

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), January 31, 2002

Answers

Nicely done. The photos are beautiful, and the presentation is great. How do you produce the pdf?

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), January 31, 2002.

Rob:

Awesome body of work! My compliments. Great scans and great color -- What film were you using?

BTW, I'm not sure what that monkey was doing, but he sure looked happy! (I'm still LMAO over that one!)

;-),

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), January 31, 2002.

great work rob! some of your pictires remind me of Mary Ellen Mark work on prostitutes in Bombay.

I have a question, is there a reason why all your images are cropped in a similar way? is it because of scanner limitations, own liking or just to protect your work?

-- r watson (al1231234@hotmail.com), January 31, 2002.

Enjoyed it very much, number 22 is my pick. Jeff you gotta get the full Acrobat 5.0 app to produce the files.

-- Dave Doyle (soilsouth@home.com), January 31, 2002.

Jeff, I use Pagemaker 6.5 to make the pdf's.

Roberto, what do you mean by cropped? They are all full frame. They have to be very compressed - the next compression level gives me a 10Mb file - so they're not very smooth.

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), January 31, 2002.

BRAVO!

-- Glenn Travis (leicaddict@hotmail.com), January 31, 2002.

Rob:

The photos are superb. Bombay has some of the meanest streets in the world, and the area around the Taj, as you well know, is so thick with beggars, pimps, and drug users that I’ve never been able to find its saving graces. Patience and a sensitive eye are your hallmarks!

My only, I hope helpful, bit of “criticism” is that I would like to have seen a few more establishing shots to complement the close-ups. When, as you say, an Indian village has been transplanted to the city streets, it would be good see things from a few steps back. I would like to see a little more of Lansdowne, of Bombay itself, to appreciate the milieu in which these people live. But that’s an editing issue.

Anyway, great stuff. I hope people appreciate how truly difficult it is to get shots like that in India and the sensitivity you have brought to the subject (I get too impatient with the saffron yarn on my wrist, the sugar nuggets, and the pleas to purchase “milk powder”!)

Regards,

-- Preston Merchant (merchant@speakeasy.org), January 31, 2002.

Great work Rob! I'm getting to the point where I'm able to say, "That looks like an 'Appleby' photo."... before seeing the credit.

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), January 31, 2002.

I meant those don´t look 2x3, but it must be a matter of compresion, Rob; great work!

-- r watson (al1231234@hotmail.com), January 31, 2002.

Roberto, I think that's a problem with the monitor; stuff always looks a bit stretched vertically because the pixels are not square. I believe there are some high end screens with square pixels. I've often considered resizing to compensate for this, but then I suspect different monitors have different pixel aspect ratios, so I've never bothered.

They are 2x3 by pixel count, however.

BTW - I think MEM's Falkland Road is her best work, and I called this Lansdowne Road as a homage to her. Pity she went over to the more sterile, clinical BW (IMO).

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), January 31, 2002.

Rob,

Did you use a flash? Some of the images appear to have a highlighted effect, as if from flash.

-- Rob Schopke (schopke@attbi.com), January 31, 2002.

Hello Rob,

this is a very, very good series of photos! I erally enjoed going through them. Thank you for sharing your visions of India.

Best wishes

-- K. G. Wolf (k.g.wolf@web.de), January 31, 2002.

I'm not able to download it. Is the URL indeed:

http://www.robertappleby.com/personal/lansdowne road.pdf

- with a space between "lansdowne" and "road.pdf"?

-- Tse-Sung (tsesung@yahoo.com), January 31, 2002.

KG - I'm glad you like them. But India is much much more than this, and even my view of India is much more. I'll be posting some more pdf's shortly.

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), January 31, 2002.

Love the portfolio Rob.

How did people respond to being photographed? I have done some work in Bolivia and the locals either love it or hate it,no middle ground and the ones who say yes charge you about us50 cents!

-- Phill (philkneen@manx.net), January 31, 2002.

Beautiful work, & I love the PDF format. Nicely nicely done!

-- Patrick Garner (pg@patrickgarner.com), January 31, 2002.

I know what you mean rob, tell me, so I love freedom of sigth, it has keept me comfortably into amateur photography, to ignore what you see or force your eyes into something you don´t care, got to be bitter than a drop of sweat into your eyes; although I don´t consider that her best work.

but pixels got to be square some day, what the hell!

be proud of your work my friend!

-- r watson (al1231234@hotmail.com), January 31, 2002.

by the way, I see at least one long lens shot, probably a 90, what is it?;

another one, once I read you use Abrahamson´s RW on all your bodies, how do you handle fast winding and same focus on secuence shots without taking your focusing finger off the tab?, well sorry for the "so specific question"? I just got mine and I´m figureing out how to...

-- r watson (al1231234@hotmail.com), January 31, 2002.

Hello Rob,

Unfortunately I am unable to open the link. Any idea why?

Thanks, Tom

-- Tom Gallagher (tgallagher10@yahoo.com), January 31, 2002.

Never mind all, I managed to get it open. Nice work Rob. Some of the pictures are outstanding. If you don't mind my saying, I think some of the photos are a bit repetitive. IMHO I would consider editing the group a bit tighter. How long were you able to work on the project? Are all the photos shot with Leica M. If so, do you have a lens preference? I'm wondering what you think of Steve McCurry's work.

Best Regards, Tom

-- Tom Gallagher (tgallagher10@yahoo.com), January 31, 2002.

Fantastic work Rob! Bravo, Bravo!!

I like the cover shot, and especially the one of begging at the stop light, with the young baby reaching out from inside the car. A very fresh and nuanced take on something of a signature shot from Bombay.

And many thanks for the free treat :-)

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), January 31, 2002.

Excellent work, Rob. I enjoyed both the photography and the presentation. Including the names of the people and your personal comments added greatly to the cohesive presentation.

-- Ralph Barker (rbarker@pacbell.net), February 01, 2002.

Rob: I still can't get the .pdf - I get "URL not found" clicking on your posted link, and trying to go through the main website I get messages that all the "india" galleries are "Off-line for the time being."

???

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), February 01, 2002.

roberto, this was all done with the R6, 24 35 and 50, but there's only one 50 shot (the three boys headshot). After this I went over to the M because the R6's kept on breaking. As for the rapidwinder, you'll get used to it, as Frank Zappa used to say.

Tom, I shot something like 150 rolls of film for this project over about seven months, obviously not fulltime. As I said in the intro, it was a personal obsession. I guess I could edit it even tighter, but I'm fond of all these snaps (which I know isn't a good reason to publish them, of course!).

Mani, the shot of the boy begging at the stop lights is a funny one - I actually climbed onto the car to take the picture, and when the lights changed the family just waved at me and drove off. Only in India!

Thanks all for the reviews.

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), February 01, 2002.

Rob: I still can't get the .pdf - I get "URL not found" clicking on your posted link, and trying to go through the main website I get messages that all the "india" galleries are "Off-line for the time being."

I think part of the problem is the space in the file name. Netscape doesn't seem to like it. IE is better- but my browser did not recognize it. I had to choose the application- Acrobat Reader. But it wouldn't "stay" open. So I opened it in Acrobat (not the free Reader, but the program that you can write with)- after adding an underscore to eliminate the space in the filename.

Very nice photos, brilliant colors, very nice layout, BTW!

-- Tse-Sung (tsesung@yahoo.com), February 01, 2002.

OK - I renamed it as

http://www.roberta ppleby.com/personal/lr.pdf

That should do it.

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), February 01, 2002.

Rob, none of this surprises me. I've seen it all before!!!.......You've copied another photographers work...infact a great photographer, whom inspired me to take some interesting shots in Indo and buy an M6. Hmmmm, oh it was you....when you had your website running. There certainly is the "Appleby" look! Your shots are always impressive Rob. Keep up the good work. I'd love to go shoot with you next time if you need a partner. Anyway can't wait to see your next lot of PDF's. Thanks, your work is appreciated as usual. Steve McCurry could learn a thing or two from you.

-- Kristian Dowling (kronik) (leicashot@hotmail.com), February 01, 2002.

Thanks for the very fine work. Look forward to your website galleries being up again. It's probably not appropriate but I thought I'd let you know that I particularly liked images on pps 16,23,24,26 +32. Thanks again.

-- steve (stephenjjones@btopenworld.com), February 01, 2002.

Robert,

Thank you for this wonderful essay, which means all the more to me since I was born a stone's throw away from the location. Rather than just another set of "Indian squalor" pictures, your photographs and composition showed that these people have humanity, something most people forget. I must admit that living in India one tends to look through these people and get on with one's life, giving them money out of a sense of guilt or to just go away.

A lot of people go to houses of worship and yet don't carry those teachings outside, to their fellow humans. This was made vividly clear in New York last September, when people suddenly realized that we are all human, and not just different colored people with different bank balances. Death was a great equalizer, and teacher to the living.

The amazing thing is that they live a block away from the Taj Hotel, one of the most expensive hotels in India, where most of us cannot afford to spend even one night. And also close to the Gateway of India, which was built just so that King Emperor George V could walk through it on his visit to India.

Best wishes,

-- Vikram (VSingh493@aol.com), February 02, 2002.