Hindustan Times
Just say cheese!
Travel is very rarely only just about the place and the beauties it has to offer. It’s also about the food, the culture, the architecture. Central to all this are people. To truly understand a city, you need to understand its people and what makes them tick. What drives their ambitions or causes their lack of them. Whether they believe in working hard, or in partying equally hard.
Thus, portraits are an essential part of any traveller’s catalogue of his destination. Yet shooting them can always be a dilemma. I for one always worry about encroaching on the subjects space, and more often than not, put my camera away; later attempting to recapture the image in a picture made of words.
I was reminded of this by a wonderful post that Charukesi has up on her blog Itchy Feet. Go read her discussion on what makes a good portrait and little bits of helpful advise on how you can shoot them. Leave me your own inputs in the comments.
When you’ve read that, I’d say you’re about primed for the next step. That’s when you should hop over to JAP’s to answer his questions on the same subject. Questions that will make you think beyond the obvious the next time you’re about to point your camera at a ‘suitable subject’ and take a photo.
When you’re done there, head to Steve’s Flickr stream for some serendipitous photo viewing: his interest in people and the fact that he’s an anthropologist seems evident to me in every shot.
To cap things off, here’s portrait from me, shot right here in Mumbai itself. Tell me what you think is missing, or what I got right.
Cheerios!
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
Loading ...Posted by Neha Dara on Saturday, October 10, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Filed under Travel · Tagged architecture, camera, Charukesi, destination, photo, portraits, Travel, traveller’s catalogue
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