Alert Mind and Camera In Hand

Photo walks are not like diamond prospecting. Or gold prospecting. You walk long distances in search of an opportunity to click a beautiful photograph but there is never a dearth of photo opportunities, alert mind and a camera in hand is all it takes.

And those which you get are worth their weight in gold at least in your eyes.

Before we started, I went out in the garden. Just did this lazy click. I have titled it ‘The House Beyond.’ This was the starter. When something is partly hidden, like this house, we get curious.

It was a quiet early morning, and a mother daughter duo was taking another child for a walk.

We went to the bus stop. Near Kingston Hospital. I noticed this stump and a dying tree. Autumn is yet to set in. When I see a dead tree, my heart weeps. I titled this photograph ‘The Dying and the Dead!’

At Norbiton, I saw this interesting scene – the shadow of a tree completely cast on the wall. Never ever I had seen any shadow like we see here.

We went to Kingston. And walked to the market. This is a site I love. The market offers fresh fruits of various colours. In this season you get lovely fruits. The little boy was attracted to the merchandise too.

The stone used for coronation was just a hundred yards away (they do not use the Metric system here, so yards!), but we avoided that site. We preferred the short cut to Charter Quay. And saw this stunning ‘Flock of Mallard Ducks’ sculpture.

Mallard ducks are common here. Wikipedia tells us ‘A noisy species, the female will often call with a sequence of 2-10 quacks in a row, starting loud and with the volume gradually decreasing. Male mallards make a sound phonetically similar to that of the female, a typical quack, but it is deeper, and quieter compared to that of the female.’ Well, it happens among the birds too!

Pigeons had flocked to the Watch Tower on Thames. They obviously had the ‘Bird’s eye view’ of the river.

And I have never seen a more beautiful tunnel, it was under the bridge over Thames.

There is a narrow passage that led us to the main road. A couple was walking ahead of us. It was a perfect setting for street photography.

And my last click – this gentleman was playing jazz music on the high street. I stood there listening to his music. Superb it was, it touched my heart.

He was lost in playing the Sax, unaware of the crowd around him. And the rhythm was playing well. I could relate to the musician. I felt like him. Hans Christian Andersen said, ‘Where words fail, music speaks.’ And photographs too.

Vivek S Patwardhan

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others/ All work copyrighted.