I shall talk about props in a bit. In this picture, two devotees of Hindu Goddess Kali are spending a quiet moment on a joint. They spent an hour, intermittently smoking & sharing niceties & talking of various philosophical aspects of life!

The device they use is called a “Chhileem” in the local language & very similar to a local cigar. Rudimentary in construction, this tiny device could deliver a serious shock to anyone not used to the raw smoke of tobacco.

They were a little hesitant for me to take their pictures. Their concern came from being ill-advertised to the younger generation. Although smoking from these “Chhileems” and similar cigars are restricted to finding the special type of tobacco, they are widely spread amongst the devotees’ population along the Ganges.

While doing a few studio shots in Connecticut, the model, an old gentleman had given me a great deal of information on props for studio shots using Cigars

He had mentioned some famous Smoke Shops that feature some of the finest Cohiba cigars, Macanudo cigars and all other major cigar brands. These are some of the finest & available online at http://www.famous-smoke.com/. So anytime I have a studio photo shoot with a cigar smoking model, I know where to order some!

The image above is shot on a Nikon D200 with on camera speedlight set on -2 ev & using a wide angle lens.

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NOTE: We have moved to Journalimage.com from Feb 2008. Please visit us on the new site & update your bookmarks.

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The weekend prior to Presidents Day, while New York city, like the rest of the country was busy rushing from store to store buying as many items on sale as possible, a few young people were out on the chilly streets in Broadway trying to make a difference to the almost 50 thousand homeless, one person at a time.

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All they asked for was a dollar. But the busy shoppers were even more keen to escape the fright of being asked for a donation. Albeit, changes could be brought by a few and rejoiced by all.