Use Your Time – Don’t Let it Pass You By…

Inevitably, you will spend a lot of time in cabs if you’re travelling around (or between) cities in India.

The roads are horrendously packed and going 10 miles can take 2 hours if you’re unlucky.

So as a photographer you are wasting time – right?

Well no, actually. You are usually going slowly enough to take in the surroundings and take photos as you travel.

As you drive by stuff, shoot it! Not in the Los Angeles gang sense of the word, but take photos as you move through places. Sure your hit rate may be lower due to less time to see, compose, expose and shoot – but working this way can get you some interesting results.

What to use..

Were I going again, I’d probably take a super zoom lens – one which covers from wideish (24mm, say) up to long (200-300mm) so you only need one lens and rarely have to change the thing.

In fact, I’d usually have the 17-40 and 70-200 on me – and choose one for the “drive by shootings“.

Wide lenses are better in small streets – where the cab is close to the kerb. You can capture whole scenes – the bedlam of street life in one frame.

Long Lenses are ok in tight situations IF you are going slowly. You can usually zoom in on individuals and get great character shots if you’re going under 20mph – any faster then you are usually bouncing around on the rough roads, moving to fast to analyise the scene and struggle to focus on anything at all. Long lenses are good on highways with good views and low fences too. YOu can pick out farmers in fields, brick works and all kinds of animals.

Settings…

Everyone asks about settings, the true answer is “it depends” – and it does.

In general, you want the fastest shutter speeds possible because you’re moving and the subject maybe too – so 1/100th just doesn’t cut it – you’ll get blurred shots.

• ISO – 800+
• Aperture – 2.8 to 5.6, usually very wide
• Exposure mode – Aperture Priority usually, or manual in more consistent light
• Metering Mode – Centre weighted, because the bright sky tends to underexpose stuff in Matrix mode.

Not really rocket science – and using those settings leaves you free to get on with finding and shooting stuff in a split second. That’s the challenge – not the technical aspect.

What to look for

It’s all about the people and the weird, to western eyes, stuff they do. A few ideas…

• Rarely do you see a moped without 2 or more people on it… they’re great to capture.
• Men with massive loads on pedal cycles.
• Cows outside boutique shops.
• Groups of police chilling in the shade.
• tuk tuk drivers waiting at lights
• strange road signs
• farmers in fields
• urchins doing stuff at traffic lights – cartwheels, acrobatics… they’re great.
• life in general

That’s the beauty of India – it is so different to the west that just looking out of any window of any cab will reveal thousands of photo opportunities, but you have to look and be ready.

What not to look for

Buildings – there’s little point trying to photograph great buildings from the car seat. Use them as backdrops for your people shots, but if you see a great temple – stop the car and get out. We drove past the amazing train terminal in Mumbai one afternoon and tried to get a few shots. Total waste of time photographically.

Instead, we returned a couple of days later, with tripods and cameras ready, and got some amazing results.

Also, if you’re into markets and getting character shots and people smiling, you need to interact with them. You can’t really do this from a car that often. Only in a gridlock situation do you get chance to wave, smile and get a wave back. We got this at Santacruz in Mumbai – but that was a one off.

A Few More Drive By Shooting Shots…