I’d been planning a trip to Mumbai for some time now, with thoughts in my head as to what I might shoot whilst I’m out there. One thing was for certain, I wouldn’t be capturing those standard boring touristy shots you see so often. My thoughts lead me towards shooting street-related content and perhaps local people if I’m lucky.
Well, my luck was certainly in on that trip when I managed to secure and capture a host of locals, more importantly, their lovely and interesting faces. They came from all walks of life, and each and every one gave me their consent to raise my camera and capture them as I saw them.
Here are my 10 favorites from the trip. I did shoot of 8 rolls of film on that trip.
This is the lovely face of the many front-of-house staff at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel. Such a lovely girl with such a pretty smile and full of colourI refer to this shot as Mr Dabbawala. This gentleman is just one of Mumbai’s 5,000 “Dabbawalas”. Every working day, they deliver more than 130,000 hot lunch boxes throughout Mumbai. On time, every time.The banana salesman. Whilst he doesn’t appear to be all that happy, he was an interesting guy. You see a huge amount of people selling a wide range of everything on the streets of Mumbai. Often, this is their only means of making a living. I, of course, made sure I bought some bananas from him.The random policeman. He was just sat at the Mumbai’s largest fish market entrance and as soon as I said “Namaste”, hello in Hindi, to him he smiled away. Then my shutter opened and closed. A lovely guy.The young salesman sporting his goods. This is another example of how friendly I found all that I met. He again was happy to shoot away. The lady street hawker. Wherever there was a tourist, you’ll find a street hawker selling their wear’s. Often the younger girls will carry their firstborn with them, and you can see why the tourists are drawn in. We stepped to one side, and I grabbed this image of her and her wee one.How could I forget this guy? He referred to me as Mr Rick. A local cab driver that I used to sit with early in the morning for a chat over Indian politics, corruption and photography. He was a big fan.The lady with the dog. Now, dogs are a common sight on the streets of Mumbai, but 99% of them are either stray or wild. The difference here for me was to see a local with her dog on a lead. A rare sight, I thought. She was happy to pose, as was the dog.The young ” Ravi Shankar” as I called him. Ravi Shankar was the greatest ever Sitar player. This guy is the new blood if you like. He sat in the foyer of my hotel playing away. He sounded ace .Mr water salesman. What I love about this shot is firstly him, full of colour as was his stall, which married up so nicely. He didn’t need to smile. I just loved him.
To summarize, then. For you out there who is considering heading to India for a trip, make sure you’ve got tons of film with you, as you certainly won’t be short of content. I’m really happy with what I shot, and I’ll be back.
