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"I wound up making 8 trips to Kashmir...
I used the E-1 the whole time."
This photo of the flower-seller at Dal Lake was one of many, many photos I took
for the book, The Vale of Kashmir, which will be published in the autumn of 2007.
I originally went to Kashmir in 2003 to photograph the saffron harvest. But I
fell in love with the region – its sweeping scale and wonderful people,
who opened their hearts to me. I wound up making eight trips to Kashmir to take
photos, maybe 35,000 to 40,000 images in all, of which 200 appear in the book.
I used the E-1 the whole time, and never had any kind of problem, mechanical,
electrical, or optical.
This picture of the flower-seller was taken from a small boat like the one the
flower-seller is paddling. I used a standard kit lens, a ZUIKO DIGITAL 14-54mm
F2.8-3.5 zoom, which gave me a comfortable working range given the foggy conditions
and subject. I was staying at the lake on a houseboat, but had gotten up early
and hired one of the small boats, called a shikara, to take me to photograph
the Floating Market.
Although more than 100 boats congregated as usual for the market, it seemed the
fog wasn’t good for the flower-seller’s business. So when he gave
up and headed off with his merchandise unsold, I asked him if I could follow
and take his picture. He agreed, and I took quite a few photos of him before
we said our goodbyes and parted company. On a subsequent trip, I gave him prints
of the photos, which seemed to please him very much.
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| Flower-Seller in the Fog, Kashmir |
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