Travel Photography Tips | Be Patient and You Will Be Rewarded

© 2010 Wazari Wazir | Travel Photography | Hawa Mahal | Jaipur | Rajasthan

Hawa Mahal, the pink building here is among the most photograph building in Jaipur Rajasthan, or better known as The Pink City because there is a lot of pink colored building here. It is quite difficult to photograph this building beautifully because of its location, really close to the busy street and you really need super wide angle lens in order to get the building from top to bottom since you can’t move further back and using 50mm standard lens will never get you the whole building.

Behind me there is a row of small shops selling all kind of things, from souvenir to the grocery. The point is, I can’t move further back and using super wide angle lens or UWA Ultra Wide Angle Lens is the only option, I’m using 10-20mm lens to get this shot. If you have a chance to visit this beautiful old city of Jaipur, make sure you photographed this building, you journey here won’t be completed without having this iconic structure to make your friends jealous of you.

Anyway, the point of this article is not to make you jealous but to let you know that sometimes all you need to do or to have is just a little bit of patience, whenever you are facing with beautiful monument or building, do not rush straight away and take pictures blindly like firing a machine gun, take  few minutes to scan your surroundings, and please consider to add few foreground elements to make the picture more interesting to look at rather than just a static building.

Once you have scan the surrounding, take another few minutes or less to think what kind of a subject will make a great foreground that can be relate to the building. In this case I’ve decided to wait for the Rickshaw to pass by and get the shot. It is not really difficult to get the  Rickshaw to pass by this place because there are too many of them but I need to wait for the right kind of  Rickshaw. I need to wait for the right colored of Rickshaw to pass by and when I saw from a distance the right kind of Rickshaw that I want to photographed against the building, I framed the building and just wait until the Rickshaw enter the frame and press the shutter.

Actually I spent almost twenty minutes here just to get the right combination, sometimes there are two many activity in front of me, sometimes there were cars or bus  in front of the Rickshaw. I need to get a clean shot of the Rickshaw and the Hawa Mahal building. Some landscape or architectural photographer does not want anything between them and the subject, they consider it as a distraction but for me especially for travel photography, for editorial purpose, having the right subject will enhance the story, you get to know what kind of place this is and what kind of activity taking place here. Just a glimpse of life surrounding this beautiful building.

So the next time when you go out shooting, please be patient and do not rush, sometimes a boring subject can be greatly enhanced with the addition of few other elements, as a photographer, we are visual story teller and I think a great photographer not only can be a story teller but also can become a visual artist with the right kind of framing and composition, your visual story will be more pleasing to the eyes, be patient and you will be rewarded.