STORY BEHIND THE STILL
How Mohit Khetrapal captured an immersive composition in low light and a busy environment
ABOUT THE SHOT: Some subjects transcend the basics of photography – while light, colour and detail all play a part, the true essence of the shot is the ‘atmosphere’. This can be tricky to define and is only captured when the photographer understands the key aspects of what makes the scene special. Holy festivals and ceremonies are great examples of this, as Mohit Khetrapal explains.
“This picture is from the very famous Ganga Aarti, which happens in Varanasi, India. The priests are worshipping the holy river Ganges and seeing the spiritual environment and energy around me made me want to take this picture. I wanted to capture the essence of the Ganga Aarti in my frame. My aim was to fill the frame with a foreground, midground and background, to give the picture a three-dimensional feel. All the priests worship in sync and I wanted to show that synchronisation in my composition. My focus was on the middle priest and at the same time I wanted to keep all the other priests out of focus, to give the viewers a hint of what is happening in the background.
I did post-process this picture. For the most part I adjusted the white balance and tweaked the basic adjustments like Highlights, Shadows, Whites and
Blacks. After that I shifted the image to a rather blue tone, to accentuate the blue hour. I did colour grade the image and sharpened it at the end.
There were some challenges experienced when capturing this shot. The place was really crowded and keeping this crowd out of the frame was really difficult. It was tough for me to keep myself steady in that crowd, to avoid any camera shake. I was also looking to avoid overlapping between the priests as much as possible in the picture, so that the image looks clean and aesthetic.”