Was invited today to join a couple of friends [Ujwala and Kuhu] on a photo trip down the road from Dhaka to Ashulia, and beyond… what a great experience this turned out to be. Ujwala is using some of these photos as reference for her lovely portrait work – Paan Khaye, Watermelon Vendor, the Lady from Ashulia, and Ashulia Man 2.
Some photos were taken from a moving car, but most from on the ground and close up to my subjects. I had considered using a long lens and shooting “candid” but that would have meant that there would be no engagement with the subject. We decided to have Kuhu and Ujwala engage people in a conversation, explain that we were shooting images as photo-reference and photograph only those people who agreed. It turned out great! I was sometimes just a few feet from my subject, shooting wide.
Click on a thumbnail to see the full page photo…
First image, a lone tree on the banks of the Turag.
 
 
 
 
2nd image: Rickshaw puller. 3rd: Man selling Ginger. 4th: Women in colorful clothes on rickshaw, she saw me aiming the camera from our car and quickly pulled a veil over the young womans face! 5th: Another rikshaw puller, carrying heavy sack of grain. 6th: Drawing water from a deep-tubewell with a hand-pump.
 
7th: The customary Cow! 8th: Man who wanted his picture taken.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
9th: Fire-wood merchant. 10th: Wood-merchant’s wood-cutter. 11th: Woman with child, she spent a while chatting to us happily. Wanted to know where we were from, what we did, what we woud do with the photographs… 12th/13th: People who stopped to have photo taken. 13/14/15th: Local women at a market. 15th: People riding in/on a bus with a large advert-hoarding in background. 16th:Â Coy Woman. 17th/18th: Bus Conductors! 19th: Woman getting angry, man taunting her.
 
 
 
 
16th: Girl riding atop the bus saw us photographing, clambered down and demanded to be photographed “properly”! 17th: Watermelon vendor at a bus-stop. 18th: Brick kilns, pollution. 19th: Toll-collector. 20th: Rickshaw on the road back from Ashulia to Dhaka.
Tech info for the pixel-peepers:
All images taken with Nikon D2Hs [images shot in NEF format], Nikkor 18-200mm VR lens, handheld, natural light only.
Absolutely fabulous photographs! Thank you.
Thanks! and thanks for inviting me along – one of the most fulfilling photo-trips I’ve done in a LONG time.
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