Tales of a Travel Photographer

Hampi Bazaar...

 

The sky was still on fire, like the muscles in my legs, as we climbed down Matanga

We entered the Hampi Bazaar - dark and deserted. I shot one reflex frame. I knew the light was too low. I knew I should atleast stop walking while grabbing that frame. I knew it would look grainy later on. I cared less. I knew the TZ1 could not capture what the eye of my mind saw.

500 years ago, this must have been what Champs-Élysées was just before the French revolution or the Sunset Boulevard in LA today is. Rows of bright wicker lamps burning animal fat lighting the place up. A shop in every stall. Fresh vegetables selling next to Sri Lankan pearls. Finest goat ribs next to sharpest swords. Men and women on horse back, buying from 6 feet tall stalls (and one would think America invented drive-thru). A hawker shooing away a truant. An unshod child scattering a chicken flock. A widow in white hurrying towards the Vitthala temple. A nervous boy eyeing a pretty girl in a bright duppatta across the street. A royalty strolling under a gold laced umbrella.

Hubbub. Chaos. Aroma. Dust. Every sensory organ invaded.

I did not look at the LCD screen to see what I had captured. I would rather live in the present. 500 years ago.

Matanga Hill, Hampi

 

Beer or sunset ?

The prevalent debate as we walk through the 500 year old Hampi Bazaar - once famed for selling diamonds and rubies in the open - today being reused, quite pragmatically, as a police station, a travel agent, a grocer and such.

Actually, I thought it is quite a non-debate.

After a long, tiring day in 110 degree F will a dull consistent ache in every perceivable muscle and with ruin-fatigue starting to setting in,  there was no doubt in my mind that we should be climbing the 200 steep steps up Matanga hill, that would take us 110m above terra firma, to catch the sunset. 

The call was right. After all, we still guzzled gallon of ice cold amber later.

The sequence could not have been reversed.

Vitthala temple, Hampi

 

"A good shooter quickly whittles down his choices&", Louis L'mour wrote in one of his epics.

How different is photography? Camera holster? View finder? Aim and shoot?

I had three parameters as I stood in that ancient, holy courtyard on the day.
Light, Angle, Frame. 
The fourth - camera, my D60, was not yet bought. I was stuck with the TZ1.

Light was not changing with the quantum of time I had on my side. This was not one of the times I would say, "Camp until the magic hour"I had a train to catch.

Angle was limited. I stood where I stood. In my Bata floaters.

Frame was all I had to play with. The place swarmed with tourists. Upwards of 500 to my best estimate. I stood there, camera to my eye, sweat pouring down in the Hampi heat, waiting until I stole a moment in time like it seemed I had the site to myself.

Then *click*

I knew I could handle the rest in PS. That is one tool the gunmen in the W W West never had.

Ansel Adams once said, "A good photograph is knowing where to stand"

Pardon if I can add, "...and knowing what to wait for ..."