Saturday, October 17, 2009

Street photography-Diwali markets

I finally worked up the nerve to go for my very first walk around to take photographs last night. Since it was the night before Diwali I knew I'd get some colourful shots of the local marketplace.
I almost chickened out though. Its one thing to take a few stray photos when you see something interesting. They are quick and you're just passing by so before anyone can figure out what you're doing, you're gone.

But when your camera is constantly in your hand, navigating your way around an EXTREMELY crowded market, dodging cars, people, dogs, and the glares of certain vendors in a place that does not cater to any tourists, a simple thing like taking (a lot of) photographs turns in to a daunting task.

Especially when you've never done proper street photography before. And even worse, when you're doing it with the help of a standard digital compact camera, which requires standing still for a some very long, painful seconds to avoid a blurry mess. Which is what the first few photos looked like-A blurry mess. But after about 10 minutes i stopped feeling self conscious and made it a point to aim, and stand perfectly still till i got the shot, no matter who was staring/glaring.

Here are a few of the decent ones...



Paper Lanterns and Paper stars with a light bulb in the center, along with fairy lights are used to decorate windows.












I love this one of this man with an armful of gold plated chains breaking his big notes with an ice cream vendor for change.









One of the fruit vendors even asked me if i worked for a (news)paper.





Most of these flowers have strong, heady fragrances, used either for Puja, decorating your door, the petals maybe seperated to make rangoolis, and to decorate your hair. When my Mom was a kid she'd sometimes tie a jasmine garland (known as a gajra) to her hair before she went to sleep and by morning her hair would smell heavenly.










Firecrackers...fortunately( or unfortunately, depending on how old you are) the amount of cracker bursting this year has been next to nothing. Usually the fireworks start a week before Diwali, but this time, even during the actual diwali day, all you can hear is a stray rocket, if anything.




The quality of 99% of my pics was substandard. But i was flying high from this whole experience by the time i ran out of batteries.

I headed home with a kilo of oranges, a garland of flowers, a box of fuljhadis(sparklers), and over a 100 digital photographs, that might not all be good enough to save, but they made me so happy:)

I can't wait to buy myself a good DSLR next year.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You must seriously consider sending these snaps to a discovery magazine, although the camera could have been a bit better, these snaps are full of light and frolic ! Good skill behind the lens !

medula said...

Thanks man:)
That means a lot.