Photos

We are back from Central Asia! It's been a long 3 weeks, and there are lots of pictures. I took around 2500, of which maybe 1500 survived the camera editing process. (Digital does let you go overboard.) So I have a lot more thinning out to do.

In the meantime, here is a photo of a musician from the National Museum playing a traditional Kazakh instrument called a kubuz. It is fairly similar to a violin, but held as you see here. What is harder to see is that she fingers it using not her fingertips but her fingernails. It takes years to develop the calluses on the nails, and many people cannot do it. (I'm not sure callus is the medically correct term, but whatever it is, it is a buildup of tissue.)

Technical: I dislike using the camera flash, as it flattens everything with a harsh white light. But I had to use it here, so I compensated by stopping down 2/3 of an f-stop. Minor adjustments in Camera Raw to brightness, contrast and clarity. Another slight CS3 adjustment to Brightness.