My Way Is The Highway

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 ..."