Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: BernardLanguillier on November 15, 2017, 08:30:22 am
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An attempt to capture the utter mess of India's roads at night... or how to use a D850 like a Leica M. ;)
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4518/26660111989_a789237842_o.jpg)
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4524/38380346486_c98c7abacc_o.jpg)
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4542/24565387088_d29d57540b_o.jpg)
D850 + 28mm f1.4
Cheers,
Bernard
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I find it difficult to quit looking at the first two.
Bruce
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Better that mess than our local tourist "pavement pizza" mess.
But definitely not chaos: everybody knows exactly who they are and where they are or are not going. Well, apart from the tourists, that is.
;-)
Rob
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Could also be just about anywhere in Southeast Asia. Good shooting, Bernard.
One nitpick. The first picture in the series is 3.72 megabytes. The others are similar. Roughly 500K is going to give you as much resolution and clarity on the web as you'll get in the megabyte range, and the stuff loads a lot faster.
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Excellent images, I like the first one very much.
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SO makes me want to go back. India is a street photographer's nirvana.
Rajan? Are you here? Comments?
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Thank you all for your kind comments.
Russ, good point indeed. I am fortunate enough to live in an environment with a direct 2 gigabits fiber connection straight into my house and sometimes forget about these aspects. ;)
Cheers,
Bernard
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That is one CRAZY place! Thanks for sharing a world that some of us have little experience with.
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the expression on the first one is wild !
Yes anywhere in Asia.
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Three more images from the same series.
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4570/38415638126_e5af960a6d_h.jpg)
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4578/38471423461_8e04e225bc_h.jpg)
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4579/37756649944_8130002a8b_h.jpg)
Cheers,
Bernard
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Looks like these were taken around Pune (at least the license plate MH-12 is of the Pune district).
Oh - and the street food stall in the first image does say "Puneri bhel."
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Looks like these were taken around Pune (at least the license plate MH-12 is of the Pune district).
Oh - and the street food stall in the first image does say "Puneri bhel."
Indeed Rajan,
I have been a regular visitor the past 7 years.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Good stuff, Bernard.
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What is missing is the horns, smells, tastes…
Luckily in Homebush, Sydney I can get a good goat curry. I'm planning on getting back to India soon.
Jealous,
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What is missing is the horns, smells, tastes…
Yes... but at least these photographs managed to evoke those memories I guess? ;)
Cheers,
Bernard
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Love the sets of photos. I particularly like the lighting, the shadows and highlights are great while preserving the street photography look. What speed were you shooting and fast is your lens?
Great job.
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Thank you all for your kind comments.
Russ, good point indeed. I am fortunate enough to live in an environment with a direct 2 gigabits fiber connection straight into my house and sometimes forget about these aspects. ;)
Cheers,
Bernard
I only get 100 mbs and they loaded very fast, but Russ as a good point.
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Could also be just about anywhere in Southeast Asia. Good shooting, Bernard.
One nitpick. The first picture in the series is 3.72 megabytes. The others are similar. Roughly 500K is going to give you as much resolution and clarity on the web as you'll get in the megabyte range, and the stuff loads a lot faster.
I am going to South East Asia in February, I hope my photos turn as good as these ones!
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Bernard, I was wondering if you captured these images from a taxi or tut tut? The reason I ask is that I intend to do the same on journeys between various destinations in India. I'm wondering, would I be better served sitting pavement/nearside or roadside? My gut says nearside but I'd be interested in other's opinions.
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I took them from a taxi on the left (pavement) side, a tuk tuk would work also.
The thing is that TTs tend to go slower and run towards the left, so they be a better option to capture the sidewalk since you can probably do with a slower shutter speed and therefore keep the ISO lower.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Bernard, I was wondering if you captured these images from a taxi or tut tut? The reason I ask is that I intend to do the same on journeys between various destinations in India. I'm wondering, would I be better served sitting pavement/nearside or roadside? My gut says nearside but I'd be interested in other's opinions.
In some places (eg. Bombay), you would also be better served keeping your window up. That is, if you don’t want to end up in this (https://www.tripsavvy.com/india-beggars-and-begging-scams-1539144) kind of situation.
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Very good. I did roughly similar things some years ago, my camera got damaged by the monsoon (...) and would only work with aperture fully open. After I calmed down about the damage I started to shoot at max. ISO and fully open walking through the markets having the camera waist-high in the hand, from tuk-tuks, (aren't they called like that, never heard tut-tut before, although of course it somehow fits, too!), and so on. I had to make those B/W unfortunately my camera of the time wasn't able to get those great colors you got so fine!
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I took them from a taxi on the left (pavement) side, a tuk tuk would work also.
The thing is that TTs tend to go slower and run towards the left, so they be a better option to capture the sidewalk since you can probably do with a slower shutter speed and therefore keep the ISO lower.
Cheers,
Bernard
Thanks Bernard, makes sense.
No doubt I'll be taking a tut tut or two within the cities but will be travelling by car between them.
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In some places (eg. Bombay), you would also be better served keeping your window up. That is, if you don’t want to end up in this (https://www.tripsavvy.com/india-beggars-and-begging-scams-1539144) kind of situation.
The following Steve McCurry image is one of my favourite captured in India.
begging (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/Travel/galleries/travel/destinations/asia/india/Steve-McCurrys-India/steve-mccurry-4_2451162a.jpg)
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Well, I lived in India through Independence to the mid-fifties. In those seven or eight years of childhood I never felt under threat and the people with whom I interacted were unfailingly kind, regardless of how poor they may have been.
Perhaps because of that early experience, I feel obliged to say that I am ever uncomfortable with photography of this type: however it's presented, to me, it smacks of being exploitative. There is nothing beautiful about poverty and never will be. There was a spot on france24.com today about a multi billion euro Indian effort to provide a wider western-style sanitation; much of the time there is neither water to service the toilets nor are there people to keep the establishments clean. Grandiose schemes have to be thought through, beyond their political braggng rights. Which is a bit distant from snaps, but part of the same sorry, endemic situation that's probably beyond any government's power to meliorate. Seems to me it's best seen, understood and left in peace because nothing can fix it, and especially not by glamourising it via pretty, theatrical snaps.
Rob
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Well, I lived in India through Independence to the mid-fifties. In those seven or eight years of childhood I never felt under threat and the people with whom I interacted were unfailingly kind, regardless of how poor they may have been.
Perhaps because of that early experience, I feel obliged to say that I am ever uncomfortable with photography of this type: however it's presented, to me, it smacks of being exploitative. There is nothing beautiful about poverty and never will be. There was a spot on france24.com today about a multi billion euro Indian effort to provide a wider western-style sanitation; much of the time there is neither water to service the toilets nor are there people to keep the establishments clean. Grandiose schemes have to be thought through, beyond their political braggng rights. Which is a bit distant from snaps, but part of the same sorry, endemic situation that's probably beyond any government's power to meliorate. Seems to me it's best seen, understood and left in peace because nothing can fix it, and especially not by glamourising it via pretty, theatrical snaps.
Rob
When my wife and I depart this world most of our estate will be going to a selection of what we believe are deserving causes. Seems to us a more positive action than simply turning a blind eye or worse still resorting to defeatism and pompous pessimism.
No smoke there then ;-)
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Well, we all have differing views on life; I just think some esoteric, more exotic, perhaps, forms of street photography are sometimes very close to crossing over into voyeuristic sadism with touches of smugness deriving from the good fortune to have been born into better circumstances than some of our fellows.
If it's cool to snap Asian deprivation because we can, why don't we just cross over to Glasgow or Paris and go into the estates there and wave our cameras about in the non-tourist areas...
But it's nothing new, and in his own way, William Klein did the very same thing in Harlem, but at least he knew he was running a real risk of not coming out the way he went in.
Photography is one helluva tool; whether it turns into a smoking gun is very much up to the photographer.
:-)
Rob
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...sometimes very close to crossing over into voyeuristic sadism with touches of smugness
...whether it turns into a smoking gun is very much up to the photographer.
Rob
Valid points, Rob. Although I see no smugness or sadism in Bernard's images. Merely well-executed and interested observation.
Here are some of my impressions of India, albeit from a different age. The early eighties; when India was far different than today.
As was the photography. 35mm FP4 in a Pentax Spotmatic.
https://petermclennan.myportfolio.com/india
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Valid points, Rob. Although I see no smugness or sadism in Bernard's images. Merely well-executed and interested observation.
Here are some of my impressions of India, albeit from a different age. The early eighties; when India was far different than today.
As was the photography. 35mm FP4 in a Pentax Spotmatic.
https://petermclennan.myportfolio.com/india
I didn’t see any smugness in Bernard’s images either (I rather doubt that Rob was referring to them).
Peter, your India photos are outstanding. I see you got the Jaisalmer fort.
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Thank you, Rajan. High praise indeed.
Jaisalmer remains one of the premier experiences of my life. A brief excursion into the distant past. The Silk Road made real.
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Peter,
Thanks for sharing that wonderful collection!
Eric
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https://petermclennan.myportfolio.com/india
Great stuff! The man with the bad ears ... !!!
Don't want to impose myself on you, but as we're in the process of showing India-Pictures, here's what I referred to obove:
https://flic.kr/s/aHsk5Ggden
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Very nice images Peter!
I hope that my images have indeed not been perceived as voyeurism. I go to India regularly, I am in daily contacts with many people in India that I consider to be friends.
Although I fully understand that the people living there would probably prefer to be in one of these lifeless appartement buildings, I see beauty in the mess, I see colors that I find amazing (and the D850 is amazing at capturing those), I see cultures crossing, I smell and feel energy and life much more than in a majority of other countries such as Japan.
I do love India and would consider it a failure if the images I shared didn't convey this.
Cheers,
Bernard
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My wife and I have shot in some very deprived areas in Morocco, families squatting in condemned and unsafe buildings with no power or water. What has always struck me is the pride of these people and the warm welcome we receive. We've also shot in areas with known prostitution and drug dealing but have never felt threatened.
There's surely a lesson there somewhere.
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Some very good images in this thread, thanks to all.