Every monsoon, I lead a small group of photography enthusiasts to Badami on a travel photography masterclass. The name ‘Badami’ often elicits a question by many but the ones who are well-travelled: ‘where is it located?’. This works well for me. While the town and its surroundings are home to some of the richest heritage anywhere in India (or perhaps the entire world), it doesn’t come with the kind of fame that similar sites (say, for example, Hampi or Khajuraho) enjoy. Imagine a region of 20km radius that is home to hundreds of temples, each one of them more than a thousand years old. And many of them date back more than 1,500 years.
A young man jumps into a temple pool at a small village near Badami.
But this is just one of the many reasons why Badami is my preferred location for a travel photography workshop. A good travel photographer is a jack of all trades and his/her skills do not limit to a single genre such as photographing heritage/architecture. Travel photography is a skill that involves storytelling with your images, being able to deftly adapt to photographing a variety of subjects including (but not limited to) street life, people & cultures and images that establish a good context.
Badami, a small and almost nondescript town, provides a good bunch of these subjects of interest for a travel photography enthusiast. In my journeys all across India, while I have seen many interesting and beautiful locations, I can’t recall a place that is so well-suited as Badami for conducting a travel photography workshop. Here is a bunch of reasons why I pick this small town for my travel photography workshop & masterclass.
1. A Rural Lifestyle
Badami is a small town surrounded by small villages all around, and doesn’t have an urban sprawl with large-scale economic activity. The population is largely agrarian and live in touch with the earth. Even the agrarian practices are non-mechanized and the traditional farming methods haven’t changed in centuries. Together, they form interesting photography opportunities.
Monsoon is a busy time for farmers around Badami.
2. People are open to conversations
As part of the workshop & masterclass, we spend time walking the by-lanes and residential corners of Badami, and some times meeting people in their villages. These are the kind of places where much of the village (or town) gathers around a peepul tree when they have free time. And people do have free time!
A brief conversation with these fine ladies turned out to be a moment of happiness for all of us.
3. The heritage & architecture is incredible
A diverse variety of temples dot the landscape around Badami. This includes structures built into rocks (rock-cut or cave temples), temples built in southern and northern styles of architectures and several unorthodox structures that simply helped evolve the styles. The best part: not all of them are photogenic and easy to photograph! A learning photography-enthusiast needs challenges to come with something interesting in places that are not obviously pretty. And Badami’s heritage sites have a mix of all that – some brilliantly photogenic places and some where you have to struggle to find anything of interest.
The brilliant architectural heritage in and around Badami.
4. The rural landscapes and the setting of heritage sites.
As the monsoon rains get entrenched in the landscapes, the agrarian vistas turn green and beautiful all around. Sunflowers blossom and there is new life all around. It’s a great time to be in Badami. On days with good rains, a waterfall suddenly emerges behind Bhoothanatha Temple in Badami, turning its already extraordinary setting into something almost surreal.
Sunflowers dot the monsoon landscapes around Badami.
The beautiful ancient structures in open spaces of Badami.
The setting of Bhoothanatha Temple in Badami is a fairy-tale-like!
5. Ease of access
All these places are easily accessible and are always a short drive away from Badami. In the three short days that we spend here, it allows us to use every minute of our time judiciously instead of having to spend long hours driving from place to place. The town of Badami is also easily accessed – it’s an overnight train journey from Bangalore.
Find out more about this travel photography workshop & masterclass. We do this every year in July/August to coincide with the monsoon season.