Tonight we took a fantastic sunset cruise on the Ganges. First we paddled down river to the main burning ghats to observe the amazing spectacle of Hindu cremation ceremonies. Every day approximately 300 bodies are cremated here. Photography of the cremations is not allowed, but we will have the images forever in our minds.
After leaving the burning ghats, we had one of the many flower seller girls pose for us on the front of our boat. Her name is Shivana, she’s 10 years old. We surrounded her with lit candles combined with flowers in small bowls made from dried leaves. Shivana and other children sell these to be used by pilgrims as offerings which are set adrift in the Ganges. The combination of a beautiful child, the illumination by candle light, and the backdrop of Varanasi was incredible. This shot was made with my Canon Mark II set to 1600 ISO, using a 16-35 f2.8 lens. I chose auto white balance and under exposure of two thirds of a stop.
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[…] a photo that our friend Karl Grobl made in 2009 in the bow of a small boat (Karl’s photo is here). We tried twice – and never got it (in our defense, neither of us had actually seen the […]