An Incidental Cameraman …. Over the Years

Michael Roberts in Snap-Action

Casting a Net at Twilight at Waikkal, Sri Lanka, 1990s …. truly a shot snapped on a whim as our little boat dropped us on the shore from an inland canal – with my spot in the prow giving direct access

Unlike the first snap above, the next two PIX were carefully thought out and taken during our trip to north western India circa 2004 … takenas with all the snaps by an everyday common ‘o garden camera

Lake Pichola at Udaipur from our guest-house rooftop …. and the Fort at Jaiselmer in Rajasthan from the ‘pinnacle’ room on the top floor of a rich merchant’s house

Inky, Pinky & Holly — totally unworried near Lake Louise in Canada on the road to Banff …..

AND THEN stepping back in time to our time in Sri Lanka in the 1960s and 1970s …. Shona at the ‘unrenovated’ Abhayagiri Dagoba in Anuradhapura in 1969

.… and Kim and Maya in our ancient jalopy at Augusta Hill at Peradeniya University in the year 1971 … and Shona with Kim at New Peradeniya station in the early 1970s

and my sister Estelle on the beach at Waikkal in the early 1990s  …. well before Shona and I visited Paris and looked down on the Seine from the Eiffel Tower

But, well before that moment in Paris, Sri Lanka won the World Cup in cricket in 1996 and my Bajan friend, Joe Hoad, was so delighted that he painted two classic scenes from that event and turned up at our house in Glenalta, Adelaide with this set of presents

.…. 

No precursor that to the PIX of a maaveerar shed at Jaffna University Campus and the thuyilam illam or “resting place” for the LTTE dead at Vadamaratchchi which I snapped in late November 2004

Just a mite different from Murali as he geared up for battle against sundry and mighty Others at the World Cup in Sri Lanka in 2011

…… though the ancient wreck on the long stretch of beach on the seaward side of Fraser Island in Australia evokes more puzzling thoughts

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Filed under cultural transmission, landscape wondrous, life stories, meditations, photography, self-reflexivity, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, travelogue, war reportage, world affairs

One response to “An Incidental Cameraman …. Over the Years

  1. EMAIL COMMENT from NIHAL DE ALWIS of Colombo, 28 November 2020: …. “Superb pictures of great value. Estelle looks lovely, as i remember her when she coached my children in swimming at SSC.”……………. Nihal

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