As a new year begins, we are starting a new series on Darter Photography’s blog, showcasing some works of Darter Photography Experts and Darter Travellers. To begin with, here is an image from the deserts of Rajasthan.
The coveted sunset hours in Rajasthan are brief and the magic of the golden light lasts barely fifteen minutes. A photographer has to act quickly and get all the images he has to make within this short span. You miss a composition and you have to wait for twenty four hours again for the next opportunity. The golden light during sunrise hours remains for even shorter periods and is simply not worth the effort of being out there in the cold that early. The best way to optimize your time in such situations is to survey the land beforehand and decide the compositions well in advance.
Sand dunes of Jaisalmer
Click on the image to see larger size.
During Darter’s Photography Tour of Rajasthan, this is just what we did. I planned every hour in detail during our stay in the desert, and as the sun moved towards the horizon, the details of what we shoot had to be pinned down to a few minutes interval. On the day we made this photograph, we started our camel ride towards the desert earlier than most visitors do. It gave us time to take an easy walk through a village, where we saw and photographed women in traditional attire carrying water from the community well. We reached the sand dunes at an hour that gave us enough chance to plan and compose some landscapes in the dunes before we started working our camels-silhouetted-against-evening-sun shots. The camels-silhouetted.. shots had be planned almost by the minute as we asked (and then instructed) our camel drivers to help us get shots and asked them to position the camel in the way we liked. It turned out to be a magnificently productive evening, with everyone of us going back that day with some great shots.
Here is one of those images. More pictures coming soon.