By Jenn Gidman
Images by Don Mammoser
From the friendly people to the stunning architecture, India is one of the most culturally diverse and colorful places Don Mammoser has ever visited. "Every street, every corner shop, and virtually every person you see in India are all interesting enough to almost require a photo," he says.
On his second trip there last November, Don visited the northwest's "Golden Triangle," comprising the historic cities of Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur. The Tamron 28-300mm VC PZD lens proved an ideal travel companion for his explorations. "I always like to travel light when moving around a lot and when I don't know what a place will present photographically," he says. "The image quality and fast autofocus of the 28-300 were priceless in India."
The lens also gave Don the flexibility and quick reaction time he needed. "Spur-of-the-moment street scenes there offered me some of the best travel photography I've ever had the pleasure to capture, and with the 28-300, I was always ready," he says. "I never needed to change lenses—I was able to capture 95 percent of the street photos there with the 28-300's different focal lengths."
A woman with a broom walking in front of a trio of ornate doorways was a perfect example of that flexibility. "She walked in front of those doors just once, and I luckily was able to capture the moment because I had the 28-300 on my camera and could compose the image the way I wanted to," Don says. "I simply waited until she crossed in front of that middle door to push the shutter."
Don was amazed by the friendliness of the people he encountered on his trip. "Everywhere we went, everyone was smiling and happy that we chose to visit their region," he says. "Generally, the Indian people took more images of us than we did of them with their smartphones or cellphones with cameras. Many of the locals would also ask us to take a photo of them with our cameras, then not even ask to see it. I think they just feel proud of getting their picture taken by a foreigner. If everyone were as friendly as most of the Indian folks we came into contact with, the world would be a better place."
One of the first locals Don came across was a man named Shandar. "He told us that his name in Hindi means 'shining' or 'brilliant,' like a light, and that meaning was very true indeed," he says. "Shandar ended up being my friend's rickshaw driver for four days, and every time we needed his services, Shandar was waiting for us outside our hotel at the agreed-upon time with a huge smile and a warm greeting. He called his cycle rickshaw 'an Indian helicopter,' which we thought was a very funny way to describe it. He was proud of his rickshaw and of the fact that he supported his family by being a rickshaw driver. He was truly a remarkable, hard-working, and happy man to the core."
Don was also particularly taken with the spice and food vendors in India. "Spices especially present so much color to work with that show the flavors of a place both figuratively and literally," he says. "I love the photo I took showing a woman in a colorful outfit carrying out a transaction with the vendor. Street scenes like this are very common in India—almost every street will have vendors and buyers doing these types of transactions. The spices sit in large bags and are weighed out into smaller bags for purchase, and the colors are brilliant. I simply zoomed in on this particular moment with the 28-300 at 46mm. We were in tight quarters, so I didn't need much zoom."
An elephant procession at Amber Fort near Jaipur proved a feast for Don's eyes and his camera. "Hundreds of elephants, many with colorful face painting, walk slowly up the hill from the road at the bottom to the main fort entrance," Don explains. "Trumpets blare, monkeys beg for food, tourists gawk, and for a couple of hours, elephants slowly and continuously walk past. On the way up, they're carrying one or two tourists, and on the way down just their handler. These animals are well treated, and when a lucky boy gets picked to become an elephant handler—there are way more boys than elephants—he takes very good care of his charge. I wanted to showcase that colorful paint job on this one elephant, so I zoomed in until I saw just the paint and that one very expressive eye."
The 28-300's Vibration Compensation feature came in especially handy for this image. "This type of quick-moving photography almost requires you to zoom a bit for the best compositional effect, and often with that zoom comes camera shake," Don says. "I obviously couldn't get in front of a moving elephant, but I wanted a detail shot of the eye and face paint, so I zoomed in tight and let the VC kick in to keep things sharp. That feature is one of the greatest photo innovations of all time."
For architectural shots, Don tried to showcase both the entire building or structure, then zoom in on an intriguing or intricate part and highlight that as well. "The 28-300 gave me the chance to do this easily with just one lens and lots of focal lengths at my fingertips," he says.
One of the places he visited was Safdarjung’s Tomb, a sandstone-and-marble mausoleum built in 1754 for an 18th-century Indian statesman. "I loved the leading lines of the sidelit palm trees in this picture I took and the fact that we had a blue-sky day in Delhi," he says. "We arrived early and there weren't many other folks around. I took this at 46mm in Aperture Priority mode at F/9."
The Agra Fort, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the state of Uttar Pradesh, was another example of expansive Indian architecture that Don wanted to highlight. "This is just one of a host of buildings in a complex that takes most of one day to see," he says. "Each building is massive and ornate, and I wanted to show that 'bigness' by getting just a piece of a building and that man with the broom in there for scale. I took this photo at 100mm at F/8, 1/250th of a second, ISO 400."
Don incorporated his wife into an end-of-day photo of the magnificent Taj Mahal. "This is a remarkable and spectacular building that lives up to all the hype and expectations that precede it," he says. "My wife was taking a video of the entire scene as a local boatman slowly poled us along the river. The sun was setting in an orange sky, and the Taj Mahal was almost perfectly reflected in a stunning scene that will forever live in my memory bank of wonderful moments."
To see more of Don Mammoser's work, go to www.donmammoserphoto.com or to join one of his photo tours.