picturing India......

This blog is actually about my experiences during my time on the streets for my photojournalism class. (yes I am finally learning to take good pictures!) Anyway, so one of the assignments was to take "environmental potraits" basically take interesting pictures of people doing something and that was fine until we were asked to take pictures from 4 different angles....that meant that we had to engage the subjects. So, as I set out on my adventure, I soon realized that clicking random people on the road is just not the same as having an indoor setup--which was required for the assignment, that people here have issues with privacy, that people are not very open to being clicked.......and I ended up clicking the following: a street musician, a guy selling balloons on a busy corner, a drummer by the river and a magazine kiosk owner! Basically people who did not care much about their privacy....though I must admit that one of them was a bit hesitant initially but reluctantly agreed. And my inability to get any picture of a person with a real prop inside a shop or a house made me realize one thing- that I now understood why photographers across the world go to Africa and India and other developing nations to shoot. It is in these places that you see people- people who make interesting subjects, people who are colorful not just in appearances but also in what they do. But most importantly because they are naive.....how much a hard-working farmer or a mason or an auto driver would know or think about a photograph breaching his privacy? Not much! Compare that to the people in the Western world where everybody is so conscious of their privacy and makes sure that it is not violated! Photographers here make sure that they ask their subjects if they are comfortable being clicked....I cannot say if they do the same elsewhere....it is a whole different ball game.

The most awe-inspiring picture is that with a human face and we, Indians happily provide that face! Today, while scouting for subjects for my own assignment, I finally understood why India is one of the favorite locales for every photographer....it is not just the astounding landscapes, but the palette of naive people who are only too happy to be clicked that attract them!