Wide Angled in Majuli, Assam
Follow @sanjayausta
Photo-essay on Majuli. ( Text excerpted from the magazine)
If you are photographing in Assam for the first time like I was, you would do well not to carry a heavy long-angled zoom. Everything is so vast here that it wont fit your frame unless you carry a wide-angled lens in your camera bag. In Kaziranga National Park the rhinos often breach that invisible man- animal line and come close enough to ram your gypsy turtle. From that close proximity the zoom is useless.
The Brahmaputra is so vast that it is virtually an ocean where islands appear and disappear at the river’s whim. Islands so large that for years the Assam Government has been parading Majuli as the world’s largest river island and no one doubts the claim though the largest is Bananal island far away in Brazil. Driving in the countryside you see sprawling tea gardens and paddy fields that end only at the horizon. The people here don’t run away or ask for money when you point your camera at them but settle down quietly for you to make the picture.
Majuli is also a bird lovers paradise. Rare birds like the Pelican, Siberian Crane, Adjutant Stroke flock to Majuli to gambol and fish in the wetlands here. These are few snap shots from a journey across the state.
’Stoic’ best describes the lady. Creases on her face telling of time spent under the sun either weeding, planting saplings and harvesting. Her glance speaking of one hurried blurr of acitivity that life is even in an ostensibly rural setting. AND The pin securing her blouse screams out aloud of their unredeemed lives.
Rinku. I did not see so many details as you have in the portrait of the lady. I certainly did not see the pin and so much meaning you have put into the creases and other details. Thanks for seeing. 🙂