Gleaning Barley
Near Leh, Ladakh
Our young Ladakhi guide was a devout Buddhist. I’d see him murmuring his morning prayers in the car on days when he woke late and hadn’t had time to pray in private. We visited a monastery in Nubra Valley, his home, where he often went to pray. Bushels of barley had been spilled over the floor of the monastery entrance and local women were painstakingly picking impurities from the grain. This, too, was a form of prayer.
I got down on my knees to get this shot. It’s a good idea to try for different viewpoints. Sometimes, it seems to me, that getting on your knees to get a shot like this is the equivalent of standing and shooting another standing person. You get the same “eye to eye” viewpoint. If you shoot down at them (you standing, them crouched as this woman is) then you’ve got the coveted bird’s eye viewpoint. I don’t remember if I got that bird’s eye view. This is an old slide and it would take me hours to find it and it’s companion shots.