In August I published a revised extract from the Great Chronicles, telling the story of how our Bodhisatta met with 24 Buddhas and was reconfirmed in his aspiration to become a Buddha himself.
At the time I was looking for photos of paintings or carvings of the 24 Buddhas to illustrate that work, but there seemed to be none, or when there were, they were idenitical Buddhas with no character distinction.
I had the idea to collect from amongst my photographs such a collection, and started working on that. But the problem was that the photos were far from homogenous, and often differed in ways that made harmonisation of the collection impossible. So my work stalled.
Then just a couple of weeks ago I stumbed upon a very good online editor that could take photos and produce “paintings” in different styles, a trial few of which I published to my Facebook where they were well-received. They were processed via the online editor LunaPic.
I then began to find a suitable filter to process the photographs I had prepared. I used the “fairy” setting which gives a rich reworking of the photograph, and also served to harmonize the different styles, lighting, etc. used on the Buddha photographs.
To this I have added a text and translation of the Aṭṭhavīsati Parittaṁ which gives epithets of the 28 Buddhas (the 24 our Bodhisatta met, the 3 before that, Buddha Gotama, and as an extra, Buddha Metteyya), which is also added to my collection of Paritta texts. These are now published along with many others in the Posters section of the Photo Dharma website.
