Do you prefer to take candid pictures or are you more on the side of posed? Let this guest post by Ralph Velasco shed some light on what he prefers.
Guest Blog Post by Ralph Velasco, travel photographer (on location in India!)
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When shooting in the field, I’m always on the look out to photograph interesting locals dressed in distinctive and traditional clothing. Here in India, at the Amber Palace just outside of Jaipur, it was no different.
Rajasthan, an area of India renown for its wide range of colors, even has nicknames for a number of cities, for example, there’s the Red City (Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan) and the Blue City (Jodhpur). This region is also known for having beautiful women dressed in vibrant and bangled “sharees.”
Having taken an elephant ride up the long hill that leads to the Amber Palace, in the city of Amber (this is not a reference to color), there were a number of women sweeping the vast palace grounds. This particular woman was diligently doing her job up against the backdrop of the public audience space known as Diwan-I-Aam, so I immediately took notice and went to work trying to capture the scene.
The idea was to photograph her as an otherwise faceless and anonymous figure, hidden behind the veil of her sharee. As you can imagine, she was constantly moving as she brushed the ground around her with a “zarhu,” a type of broom that’s hand constructed of thin strips of bamboo, so catching her in an interesting position was going to require a number of shots. Eventually I caught her peeking out of one side of her veil, and this made for a rather unique expression.
Even though I always turn off all the sounds on my camera in order to be as discreet as possible, she eventually caught on to the fact that I was interested in her as a subject, and so just for a moment – as if her boss might have been looking – she stood up, gave me a brief smile, and kindly let me make a few more images before she continued with her tasks.
The point of all of this is to be sure you take advantage of the candid moments that present themselves, then go for the more posed shots. It’s difficult to go the other way, from having a subject pose for you to then getting the candid shots. A good way to do this is to be sure you make use of a telephoto lens to get in on the subject without being noticed, which would in all likelihood completely change the photo opportunity. You can certainly use the zoom capability of your point-and-shoot camera, as well, but always remember to stay within the optical, not digital, range of the camera’s zoom capability.
What’s your preference, a candid shot of a person involved in EDL (Everyday Life), or a more posed and planned portrait?
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About the Author: Ralph Velasco is an award-winning travel photography instructor and international tour guide who has photographed in more than forty countries on six continents. He’s just released his first app for iPhone and iPod touch called My Shot Lists for Travel and is the author of “Ralph Velasco On Travel Photography: 101 Tips for Developing Your Photographic Eye & More.” Ralph has led cultural photo tours to Egypt, Eastern Europe, and throughout the United States. For the past two years he was awarded “Open Photographer of the Year” by the Professional Photographers of Orange County and he belongs to the exclusive Circumnavigators Club, a group of travelers whose charter requires that its members have traveled around the world, in a single journey, having crossed every one of earth’s meridians. You can follow his blog at RalphVelasco.com.