Faces of India

[rpcrowe]

Some portraits I shot today at the Diwali Festival in San Diego's Balboa Park...
1

2

3

4

[Urbanflyer]

Beautiful set!

[rpcrowe]

Beautiful set!

Thank you... There were some absolutely gorgeous ladies at the festival... I ended up leaving a bit earlier than I expected because I had to walk about a mile back to where I parked my car. Oh well, my doctor says keep exercising, it will only do your heart good...

I tried contrasting this lovely young lady with the poster n the background...





This young lady told me that she is Anglo-Indian (descended from Indian and English ancestors)



I normally don't like the look of facial piercings but, these decorations are quite nice...

This was my first try-out of the Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens for the Sony A7iii...

We have a very large Indian community in San Diego. There must have been well over a thousand people at the festival and more were coming as I was leaving. The food was pretty darn good also...

[Shadowman]

Nice series.

[Shadowman]

I like the facial piercings, some appear to be quite heavy and the ones that connect to the ear are startling yet exotic, nice additional set. By the way, its the tiny piercings that I don't like when photographing a model, unless exposed correctly they can look like something else entirely.

[Tom Barry]

Very well done, indeed.

[rpcrowe]

I like the facial piercings, some appear to be quite heavy and the ones that connect to the ear are startling yet exotic, nice additional set. By the way, its the tiny piercings that I don't like when photographing a model, unless exposed correctly they can look like something else entirely.

I know what what you mean about the smaller piercings/decorations. They often look like zits.

As far as exotic dress, jewelry, and other ethnic decorations; they often look great on the females from those ethnic groups



but, don't look so great on women of other ethnic groups who decide to wear them.

Case in point, might be the flowing Vietnamese Ao Dai which IMO looks absolutely beautiful on a small framed, dainty Vietnamese female but, (again this is my opinion) does not look particularly graceful when worn by a larger framed woman of European descent...

[zen]

A quite beautiful model in #1. Clear skin, beautiful color, perfect make-up, etc. The lady in #3 also. She looks no more that 15-16 Y.O. All well exposed. Really nice series, Richard.

Zen

[Manfred M]

A nice series of images, Richard.

Having been in India during Diwali, the San Diego version seems to be a lot cleaner and more sanitized.

My memories of Diwali when we were in Guahati, in Assam was a combination of Christmas (i.e. the lights we would decorate the exteriors of our houses with for Christmas), firecrackers and fireworks. Rather than having Christmas trees, large palm branches were found everywhere. While it might technically be the Festival of Colours, the sounds of rather large fire crackers definitely still resonates.

[rpcrowe]

Thanks friends... I missed some nice images of the dancing on the stage after dark. I had been intending to stay a lot later but, earlier in the day, I had stopped at a supermarket ATM to replenish my funds. It was hot ad I expected to be only a minute so I left the window of my car open. Some bugger reached in and stole my handicap placard that was hanging from my mirror. As a result, no handicap space for me. Since about two hundred parking spaces had been had taken up with the tents and food court of the festival, Parking was in short supply and I had to park abut a mile from the event (all uphill). I stayed at the event for about three hours and decided that discretion was the better part of valor and went home.

I would guess that most of the event participants were upper to middle class, Which may influence the difference n the cleanliness of the event. We have a large number of Indian Nationals working in the San Diego high tech industry for Sony, Qualcomm and other firms.

There is a very large diversity of racial makeup on the Indian Subcontinent. I suspect that the young lady in image three has her roots in the Southern portion of India - someone told me that her family was from Goa but, I did not hear that from her.

[Shadowman]

Richard,

She could also have Sri Lankan roots, you can never tell as the region is so divided now.

[rpcrowe]

I think that the people from South India are considered Dravidians and are generally a bit darker in complexion. India however doesn't officially recognize racial differences among its population...

There were very few obviously Anglo Indians present. Of course, the European genes could be so diluted that they are not obviously recognizable in the facial features of later generations. Overall, the ladies present at the event seemed very cultured and some of their outfits must have been very expensive.

A friend of mine in my photo group knew many of the attendees from his high tech job here in San Diego and told me that many of the Indian Computer people he worked with were educated in Bangalore which is one of India's high tech cities. Some call it the Silicon Valley of India.

[Manfred M]

A friend of mine in my photo group knew many of the attendees from his high tech job here in San Diego and told me that many of the Indian Computer people he worked with were educated in Bangalore which is one of India's high tech cities. Some call it the Silicon Valley of India.

My daughter lived in Bangalore for about 2-1/2 years and my grandson was born there, so we had the opportunity to visit the city several times (I was there twice and my wife was there four times). While there was a lot of high tech - local and international, the city was definitely not anything like a typical Western high-tech centre. Porsche, Ferrari, etc. showrooms with donkey carts parked out front and the occasional cow on the road.

[rpcrowe]

Here's another...

[Shadowman]

Nice additional portrait.