Anthony Pond | Ganga Aarti

Anthony Pond was a member of my The Sacred Cities Photo Expedition-Workshop a couple of weeks ago during which we photographed the eternal city of Varanasi and the sacred city of Vrindavan during the festival of Holi, and is a second time participant in my expeditions-workshops.

He just completed his first multimedia project of the photo expedition-workshop, and titled it Ganga Aarti. The lovely photographs are of the nightly religious ceremony held on the banks of the Ganges. The aarti is a devotional ritual that uses fire as an offering. It's usually made in the form of a lit lamp, and in the case of the Ganges River, a small "boat" with a candle and flowers is floated down the river. The offering is made to the Goddess Ganga, goddess of the most holy river in India.

Rather than using Soundslides and Audacity. Tony chose to process his photographs in Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro, and built the slideshow movie using Final Cut Pro X. Setting aside the fact that Tony is an aficionado of black and white photography, converting his photographs to monochrome eliminated the difficult lighting conditions that afflicted photography during the ceremony.

Anthony Pond worked for more than two decades in the criminal courts in California as an attorney for the Public Defender’s Office. Now pursuing his passion for travel and photography, he travels repeatedly to South East Asia and India, amongst other places, to capture life, the people and the culture. He has been a frequent contributor to The Travel Photographer blog,