India in Sepia
By handheldFilms
19 Oct 2009
India is well known for expanding horizons. And the more you participate, the more it rewards you - constantly enthralling and exhilarating, in exceptional ways and to extraordinary degrees.
If you're interested in people, and exploring other cultures and societies, it's undoubtedly one of the most exciting countries in the world: endlessly fascinating. If you like taking pictures too, it's overwhelming. Images pitch themselves at you from all directions, in a cascade of dazzling colours and intense activity, and in a wonderful, inimitable light.
Some scenes are almost too much to take, and in stark black and white they often appear as striking photojournalism. For the rest, mainstream photography tends to accentuate the kaleidoscope of colour - bright, shining and so expressive in its range and quality.
I wanted to experiment in another dimension - to strip out the colour, using sepia to highlight one of the other fundamental aspects of the sub-continent: a meditative mood of cool, quiet, serenity that is always there within the dynamic and diverse world of India. Calm simplicity and a gentle, reflective style live alongside the frenetic complexity.
The outcome is a set of photographs that narrows the colour range, while maintaining a broad perspective. Here are some of them...
(The definitive series is a collection of 12 shots, called 'India in Sepia' that is also available as a calendar for 2010.)
