This article was written for Terrascape, a travel magazine where I write a monthly column on photography.
For most travellers, it is a natural tendency to look for popular and well-known subjects when it comes to photography. So, when we travel to a beach-side holiday destination, we aim our cameras at the colourful sunset over the sea. In a town known for its rich heritage, we are likely to come back with photographs of famous monuments. The list can go on to subjects like waterfalls, mountain peaks, etc. But have you ever thought about photographing that small tea-shop next to your viewpoint? Or did you ever try exploring traditional occupations of people at a destination with your camera? Such digressions can often help you discover an unseen beauty that is not mobbed by every person with a camera.
The best way to explore such less-known options is to allow yourself ample time and take a walk with your camera in a new place. It helps, if you have already done some research on the place and have some idea on what to expect. Some of the best sources of such information can be other photographers or travel journalists who may have visited the location in the past.
Personally, one major subject that fascinates me is crafts and workmanship from a region. The more complicated these are, the more appealing they are likely to be for the camera. For instance, I was spending a few days travelling around Thiruvananthapuram and photographing its locales for a story. In my first visit to the city, I went around Kovalam Beach and Padmanabhaswamy Temple– the well-known places to see. The next time, I spent some more time researching for interesting locales, and found a fishing town and a colony of traditional handloom weavers just south of town. These places not only showed me interesting faces of the city, it helped me make images that not every photographer will come back with.
Another instance I recollect is from Nandi Hills, a picnic place near Bangalore. Most photographers go to Nandi to capture the landscape or birds in the area. But not far from this favourite picnic destination of Bangaloreans is a village that offers many unusual photography opportunities. One such place was a cottage industry, where half-a-dozen women worked extracting yarn from silkworm cocoons. It was an unusual place where rusted wheels were turned by a sooty motor, which accumulated shiny fiber of silk extracted from the cocoons.
Very often, such crafts are limited and specific to a locale that you may not find everywhere. And you will always find something interesting no matter you go. For example, you may find people making kites in the lanes behind Taj Mahal in Agra. Just outside Jaipur city is a well-established business of making hand made paper. Seek such occupations that make excellent digressions from the main scenes that attract everyone’s attention.
On a fine afternoon–a day when the clouds covered the sky just enough to make the weather feel pleasant, a small bunch of us bloggers gathered at the terrace of Hotel Royal Orchid in Bangalore on invitation from Four Seasons and Ginger Claps.
It was an invitation event for bloggers in Bangalore to interact with former Miss India Shamita Singha, who briefed us on the offerings from Four Seasons Wines and on how to pair the right wine with the right kind of food.
The event began with casual introductions as food bloggers and travel bloggers in the city started arriving just after noon. The pool side location with a canopy was an excellent place to sit or move around, meeting many new faces and greeting familiar folks. It wasn’t long before Shamita Singha arrived at the scene and took us on a quick tour of the wines offered from Four Seasons. She explained the differences between Red and White Wines, the best ways to store them and what foods pair well with which type of wines.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, let me quote from dhempe, who has perfectly summarized the briefing.
Shamita introduced us to different kinds of wines that Four Seasons has to offer like The Blush or Rose (a sweet fruity wine), the Barrique Reserve Shiraz (full bodied garnet wine) and a lovely Sauvignon Blanc (a zesty fruity white wine). She had a lot of interesting facts for us too including information about the temperature to serve the white and blush wine (8-10 degrees Celsius) and the temperature to serve the red wine (16-18 degrees Celsius).
All this while, appetizers were in continuous supply from the kitchen of Royal Orchid.
Soon after Shamita’s briefing was a live cooking session that was directed by hyperactive chef at Royal Orchid – Sudhir Nair. He invited all of us to try our hands on cooking, but most us were too scared of spoiling the food that we eventually had to eat! The flavour of the day was Thai, and on the menu was Thai Green Curry and barbecued chicken.
A good meal later, it was time to say good byes. It was an afternoon well spent with fellow bloggers from the city, thanks to Four Seasons and Ginger Claps.
Here is a compilation of all the good stuff I have been reading on the web lately.
- It is amazing how much good software can do to your images. The debate about post-processing’s to-do or not-to-do will never end, but it is hard to debate the fact that people do make beautiful looking images with plenty of help from software. And there are always a good number of photographers who wonder what would be the steps followed or the software tools used in arriving at that amazing end-result. On Digital Photography School, here is an interesting example all things that a RAW image went through into making the image of a colourful Seattle skyline.
- A lot of us take cabs to commute. A lot of us complain about their inefficiencies or lack of professionalism as well. But few of us would have seen or known the other side of the story. Here is one such story, of a man who drove a cab and all things that he thought about his work.
- Nearly every other travel story that you read is about a place or about an experience. The places remain the same (more or less) and stories about the place without an experience slowly loose sheen. Some times, there are brilliant stories that are primarily about the experience that may transcend the importance of the place. The experience may be extraordinary, unusual or it could just be the brilliant narrative of the author. One such story by Dianne Sharma-Winter talks about her experience of having to face a police inquiry and having to explain an association with a Guru.
- For a lot of people, a wildlife trip is simply about spotting a tiger or a leopard. But there is much more to wildlife and wilderness for a keen observer. Small life is fascinating as well, with some amazing behaviour and action that escapes our eyes simply because they are too small. Ever took time to wonder about the life of ants or lichens? Radha Rangarajan shares her insights into symbiotic relationships in small life, which is present everywhere around us but barely gets seen.
- Old World Wandering has some very interesting insights into the present and future of travel writing and blogging. The insights are drawn through interesting interviews with some well-known travel bloggers and writers – Rolf Potts, Jodi Ettenberg and Graham Boynton.