Chris Hawes
These colourful bursts are instantly evocative of India
Chris says: My photo was taken in a rural village in India.
The whole market was extremely colourful, but it was also completely chaotic. Looking around this chaos, I just thought I’d try to pick out some of the detail of all the colourful things I could see.
It wasn’t easy, because there were so many people milling about that trying to get a clear shot of anything was almost impossible. However, I stuck at it – and eventually, using my travel camera, a Lumix DMC-FZ28, I managed to come away with this shot. The exposure I used was 1/250 sec at f/4.5 and ISO 100. My focal length was 16mm.
Andrew says: I love the colours in this image.
Without even reading your description, I knew instantly that it was taken in India. You’ve done exactly the right thing in the situation you found yourself in, and that’s to look around to try and concentrate on detail, rather than attempt to get everything in the frame at once! As someone who has wandered around fascinating but bustling Asian marketplaces, I totally appreciate how hard it was to pick a spot without anyone getting in the way of your picture-taking.
You’ve got all the basics right, Chris. The only criticism I’d make is your crop. I’d go in a bit tighter still to give the colourful powder in the dishes even more impact. This will also help you to reduce the empty corners top-left and bottom-right, where there is also a bit of plastic creeping into the frame. Doing this means you will lose the orange mat at the top, which appears to have two rings sitting on it, although it’s so small in the frame that they are barely noticeable. Maybe you were able to make more of these in a different shot?