Street Photography: Working the Scene in Kolkata
Kolkata. November 18, 2022.
Sometimes it's best to put your walk on hold and photograph in just one area for just a bit. Maybe there's an interesting person. It could be a painter painting a wall or climbing up and down a ladder. Whatever it may be, there's usually a pattern unfolding or a person or thing of interest that anchors the scene, and the photographer wants to capture as many of these moments of interest as possible. There are other terms for this, but I prefer the street photography term "working the scene." I'm also impartial toward "fishing" too.
Working the scene simply means that you exhaust or attempt to exhaust all possibilities. On this particular occasion, my friend and I discovered a particularly busy intersection on our walk in Kolkata. There were a lot of things going on here but the main person of interest was the snack vendor who would venture out and try to sell his wares when the traffic stopped. There were also two Hijras who were going vehicle-to-vehicle asking for money. Add in two foreign photographers trying to capture a camera-shy snack vendor and you have yourself an interesting scene indeed for all involved.
Another factor that lead us to stay at this intersection was the setting sun. We'd walked ourselves out of reach of the Hooghly River, which had been our intention. But Kolkata has a way of drawing you into everyday life on the streets and we found ourselves, like in several instances already, taking our time and shooting without any strict adherence to a schedule. We calculated that the sun would give us about 20 minutes or so of good light and if we continued down the main streets around us, we weren't going to have access to that beautiful golden hour sheen. So we staked our claim on that patch of the intersection and set out to capture the vendor and other people passing through.
Whatever one's motivations for photographing a scene, always follow the light because the light should have the final say, especially when it's on its way in or out of view for the day.
