I recently spent quite a bit of time in India, traveling all over the country. As some of you already know, I’ve been there before,but never for so long and trying to do it the “local’ way. I’ll go into that a bit more later.
I’ll start this blog with some pictures from a gorgeous engagement session which was documented in New Delhi for one of my clients from California. They really wanted some images with elephants as well as around the architectural beauty of the city and we tried to do that. It wasn’t easy to plan all that from over here and on the day of the engagement photoshoot a lot of things didn’t turn out the way it should be and the day was an adventure that all of us will remember for a long time! Our plans and locations kept changing and at the end the images turned out to be amazing anyways 🙂 That’s all I can say for now…
Our last photo spot was at The Perfect Location in New Delhi. I wish we had something similar in USA or Canada.
I am shooting this couple’s wedding in the future and already can’t wait.
After the engagement session pictures, I’ll post a few portraits I took while traveling in India. That was certainly an adventure as well. Those who’ve been to India know that it is not an easy country and quite different from most others. The style of travel is probably one of the reasons it was a bit harder to travel this time around. I decided to do it the local way. That means taking local buses, cheaper class trains(that even many locals avoid if they can…) doing home stays, remote villages, eating street food instead of tourist restaurants, walking instead of taking taxis. Almost every day I would wake up at around 5am eat and go out there taking photographs, often walking as many as 25km(15miles) each day. I had my wife with me and during my spare time I would take her to cool tourist attractions,since it was her first time in India.
Here are about 20 images out of more than 200.
Bellow are a few portraits I took while traveling around the country. A few pictures will have some additional information bellow them.
I took this image of a Camel-Taxi while riding a motorcycle 🙂
It’s typically a custom to close their face with a veil in a presence of an unknown man. In many regions a woman has to also cover her face in a presence of her father in law to avoid him having any impure thoughts.
Opium ceremony preparation. When it’s a wedding, in this village people celebrating it with opium… When I asked where they get it from, he said it comes from Afghanistan. It isn’t legal, but it’s been a tradition for centuries so government doesn’t bother much – same as with many other countries in Asia and Africa.
This is my wife on a bicycle getting all the cheers from the kids and teenagers in one of the villages. Their village is quite a bit away from any tourist spots and they aren’t seeing a lot tourists( if any); they were happy to hang out, play and practice English with us for a few hours, inviting us for chai in their homes and sharing their stories. Though, it didn’t start out like this! At first they were really shy, but after about 15 minutes, we became their friends. From my previous travels, I’ve also learned to put my camera away for a bit as it can be a bit intimidating for some of them – I usually first try to get to know them and only then try to take some pictures. This way they aren’t shy, angry and are happy to be on camera. In some other villages in India we also met kids who would start their conversation with “candy” or something similar. This is because most tourist arrive there, give out candies and leave( sometimes these tourists leave angry and scared because they would be surrounded by little kids, all wanting candies). So these kids see us, tourists, as “candy machines” lol… And if you give one, another 50 will show up asking/demanding and not understanding why only some get candies. Yet, when they see that I have no candies, they become so much more friendly as they start to see me as one of their own. I feel as if this picture is a perfect representation of the friendship and connection we managed to make.
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