Dec 15: India Part 1

India was incredible. Everything exceeded my expectations, including the food, the people, the culture, the tradition, the architecture, the travel, the lodges, and luckily, the tigers.

In no particular order, I will share my favorite stories and images from the trip.

For the first post, I'll share a set of images taken from a moving bus. It's only fitting, as we traveled about 7 hours each day, in trains, planes, cars, buses, jeeps, and even bicycle rickshaws.

We saw a lot of countryside, whizzing by on both sides, with villages interspersed sporadically.

I often looked out the front window to see the road ahead.

Sometimes, though, it was better not to see the road...
(Notice that they're still smiling. We met a lot of happy people.)

When I dared, I hung a camera out the window.

It was worth it. I saw some beautiful things.

The last one is my favorite. I'll share it again soon, with a comparison to the original in full color.


For those interested in the camera technique, here are some tips.
Use a fast lens, (2.8), as it's difficult to freeze the scene at 50kph on a bumpy road.
Use an ISO that makes sense. 100 produces blurry images (too slow). 800 produces noisy ones.
If the lighting is relatively constant, expose manually and make your minor (+/- 1/2 stop) adjustments later.
If the lighting is changing rapidly, due to shade, tree cover, or a widely varying shooting angle (left, right, up, down), expose with Aperture priority. I found a +1/2 compensation was a good starting point.
Focus is tough. I liked Servo Auto Focus. Use the center focus point (it's the fastest in most cameras) and try to keep the subject in the center of the frame. It will bounce around and you'll miss a lot, but manual focus and 'One-Shot' are very difficult.
Use your drive mode to shoot in bursts, but don't be careless. Wait for good moments, then snap off 3 frames to increase your success rate.

More to come. Much more.