The Threshers
Gujarat, India 2009
As I told you in a earlier post, I shot many photos of this scene. I didn’t vary my viewpoint enough and a certain young man kept getting into my photo. Was that my fault or his??? I think it was my fault. However, in my defense, he was wearing a red shirt and can I help it if my mind kept saying “look at that red shirt”?
Lesson 1. Control your thoughts. Analyze the scene. Look for geometry, lines, circles, half-circles, anything to give your photo a pleasing composition.
Lesson 2. Change your viewpoint. Change your angle. Change your lens if you can. You’ll come out with a variety of shots to choose from. You won’t be like me who has to chose from those with the man in the red shirt and those without the man in the red shirt.
To be fair to myself, I hesitated to get into the melee of the threshers. They had a job to do and I was an intruder. I did try to shoot the women in a graceful moment as they carried loads as big as they were. I got a couple and here is one.
I added a gold filter and some texture to give the impression of heat, to show the chaff filling the air and just the plain old sweatiness of working under the hot Indian sun.
What is threshing? It’s beating the cut and sundried stalks of ripe grain against that wooden bank. There is a cloth at the foot of it where the kernels of grain fall. A girl sweeps the grain up and gathers it into sacks or baskets. Other women bring the cut stalks to the threshers. They also save the stalks to use as bedding for animals or fodder. It’s hard work, but as the workers are young they laugh and flirt and make the time enjoyable.