After a person passes away in Toraja, Sulawesi, Indonesia, they are not immediately considered dead. Instead, they are viewed as being "sick" or asleep. The body is embalmed and kept inside the family home for months or even years. The bizarre aspect here, relatives talk to the deceased, bring them daily meals and coffee, and change their clothes as if they are still part of active family life being dead for quite sometime. Sometimes they take their dead relatives out and take pictures with them.
The burial ceremony is expensive and it takes a long time until they have saved enough money to finally burry their dead relatives. Most burial places are stone graves carved into high rock faces or decorative hanging wooden coffins. Higher placement is believed to help the soul reach heaven. In addition, they also display life-sized wooden statues carved in the likeness of the deceased are placed on cliff balconies to watch over their resting places. Those wooden effigies are called tau-tau.
Sony A7c R, G 20-70mm at f/5.6
The oldest and accessible rock grave in Toraja, complete with tau-tau effigies
While on an Alaskan cruise last week, we saw several Humpback whales breaching. Luckily I had my 100-400 on my camera when it started to happen. It was impossible to predict where they would breach so I had to keep a wider angle than I would have preferred, but I still got some decent shots.
Ross Martin wrote:
Very kind of you to say, Douglas!
________________________________________________
Aspens in fog, Utah
Magical shot , Ross! I am starting to think about where to shoot fall foliage this season. perhaps West Virginia, New York state again. No time to plan for Colorado and Utah this year.
A few shots from Amersfoort, the Netherlands. This ancient town just east of Amsterdam was never on my radar screen. I saw some pictures posted by the wonderful Dutch photog Albert Dros of his hometown Amersfoort, it inspired me to visit the place. We spent one night there so we had one afternoon and one morning to look around. We had our best Dutch dinner and the best sunrise of the whole trip in Amersfoort.
ILCE-7RM6FE 20-70mm F4 G lens36mmf/8.010s100 ISO-1.5 EV
ILCE-7RM6ZEISS Loxia 2.8/21 lens21mmf/10.010s100 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-7RM6ZEISS Loxia 2.8/21 lens21mmf/10.025s100 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-1M2FE 70-200mm F4 Macro G OSS II lens70mmf/9.03s100 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-7RM6FE 20-70mm F4 G lens33mmf/11.01/3s100 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-7RM6FE 20-70mm F4 G lens58mmf/10.01/6s100 ISO-1.5 EV
Douglas L wrote:
Magical shot , Ross! I am starting to think about where to shoot fall foliage this season. perhaps West Virginia, New York state again. No time to plan for Colorado and Utah this year.
A few shots from Amersfoort, the Netherlands. This ancient town just east of Amsterdam was never on my radar screen. I saw some pictures posted by the wonderful Dutch photog Albert Dros of his hometown Amersfoort, it inspired me to visit the place. We spent one night there so we had one afternoon and one morning to look around. We had our best Dutch dinner and the best sunrise of the whole trip in Amersfoort....Show more →
Thank you Robert! Amserfoort is a beautiful small town. I didn't see Albert's video. Alert's pictures popped up in my Facebook feed one week before my trip, I was like, wow! these are beautiful! So I added Amersfoort to my itinerary. I really enjoy old towns in Europe. I copied one of his shots and uploaded it to ChatGPT to ask where in Amersfoort it was taken from, it showed me the approximate location on the street! So pic #2 in the above post is mine. Albert's photo has a lady holding a red umbrella walking on the street, that makes a big difference. My wife wasn't willing to be my model walking on the street.
Albert was kind enough to give me the location for another picture that ChatGPT and Gemini could not pinpoint.
AGeoJO wrote:
After a person passes away in Toraja, Sulawesi, Indonesia, they are not immediately considered dead. Instead, they are viewed as being "sick" or asleep. The body is embalmed and kept inside the family home for months or even years. The bizarre aspect here, relatives talk to the deceased, bring them daily meals and coffee, and change their clothes as if they are still part of active family life being dead for quite sometime. Sometimes they take their dead relatives out and take pictures with them.
The burial ceremony is expensive and it takes a long time until they have saved enough money to finally burry their dead relatives. Most burial places are stone graves carved into high rock faces or decorative hanging wooden coffins. Higher placement is believed to help the soul reach heaven. In addition, they also display life-sized wooden statues carved in the likeness of the deceased are placed on cliff balconies to watch over their resting places. Those wooden effigies are called tau-tau.
mudlake wrote:
While on an Alaskan cruise last week, we saw several Humpback whales breaching. Luckily I had my 100-400 on my camera when it started to happen. It was impossible to predict where they would breach so I had to keep a wider angle than I would have preferred, but I still got some decent shots.
I like them very much and the wider than you would have liked framing suits them very well.
.
