In the Ganapati Kulam, Sivakatirswami has been working for several phases scanning through nearly 12,000 photos that were keyworded “Gurudev.” in our digital photos archive database called “Porfolio.”

First all photos that were not really Gurudeva were skipped and of the 12,000 — 2600 or so were selected and copied to another machine. Next he viewed ever single file keeping the best and removing duplicates and out of focus shots. Then this morning Paramacharya Palaniswami made a final pass and we ended up with 1,139 “Best of Gurudeva” shots. This collection includes never-before-seen scans from our old celluloid photo collection that has been sitting in binders for 20 years and were sent out for digitization.

Next we processed all the files to a special new size for TAKA: 530 pixels wide or 400 pixels tall. Our random photo selector shows you a different photo every time you run TAKA. Note that you must keep your browser open all the way, or the landscaped photos will push below the daily quote.

Stay tuned for an incredible Cool-Iris slide show of these photos in the days to come.