Notes From A Changing India

It's been a while since I posted anything to this blog. I've been working for the past four weeks in India on a long term project which I can't talk too much about. Suffice it to say it's a look at how India is changing and modernizing, while coping with it's breathtaking history and legacy of being the largest democracy in the world with over 1.1 billion people.

I am quite taken with India and always have been ever since I came here with my then girlfriend, Julie Winokur, in 1994 to propose to each other at the sacred spot in the Himalayas where the Ganges River begins. Since then I can see how much has changed while so much has remained the same. Change here is at breakneck speed and at a quality level that is mostly world class. Indians know how to do things right and especially when it comes to technology and the utilizing the wonders of the modern world. After all, most of these new developments are being made by Indians wherever they are in the world!

Here is an image of me working in a part of India that is most definitely not cutting edge first world, along the Ganges River in Allahabad.

photo by Vinay Diddee

For the first time I am working abroad on a project that is combining traditional stills with HD video towards the goal of creating a great print story but also a kind of multimedia piece that would combine the major strands of stills, video, audio and some aspects of the flipbook idea I worked with on my piece about Iraqi Kurdistan last year. I'll be trying to accomplish something different again, but as always with the goal of creating engrossing, meaningful and relevant storytelling about an issue of our times.

Stay tuned.