The best way I can describe the Holi festival in Vrindavan, India is 'chaotic insanity.' It takes place in several Hindu temples packed with people, shoulder to shoulder, while thousands more press to enter. Brilliantly colored powder is thrown at everyone, and water is constantly sprayed on the crowd. I used an Aquatech housing to protect my camera, and that worked very well. The volume of the music was probably ten times the minimum decibel level that causes permanent hearing loss, and several times I had to prevent myself from falling due to the crush of humanity. In spite of all this 'fun', the pictures you can take are amazing. Because the Aquatech housing made it difficult to use the camera controls (I didn't want to take it off, even momentarily, because of the ever-present flying powder), I set the ISO to auto and used manual exposure mode. I then set the shutter to 1/500 to freeze the colored powder in the air, and I set the aperture to f/5.0 because of the relatively low light in the temple interior. I used only a 24-105mm lens for the entire morning.
0 Comments