In photography, the right place and right time come and go in a 60th of a second

The first rule of success in photography is to be in the right spot at the right time.

The word "rule" makes this aphorism seem more scientific than it really is. Every photographer knows that getting time and location to collude to produce a memorable image is generally a function of trial and error, endless waiting or pure, dumb luck. Serendipity, as I mentioned in the last column, is never far off, always lurking, ready to make us look better than we really are.

This does not mean that you don’t pack your bags the night before or don’t get up at the crack of dawn to be at the sangam in time for sunrise. But it is more than likely that once you are on location, the truly interesting shots will be the ones which just sort of happened. This image is a case in point.

Photography in Varanasi can be a challenge. The energy is so intense down by the Ganga that it can throw you completely off track. Everything is subject matter. The frustration is not in knowing where to look, but to keep looking. I have spent days clambering up and down the ghats in search of that image that captures something essential about the place, but that’s also something fresh. To leave the ghats with a good picture that does not include sadhus and temples or saris and pilgrims is hard work. I have failed miserably so many times.

One winter morning, I found myself chasing pilgrims up some stairs to a courtyard above one of the ghats. I had been at it for hours and was completely uninspired. Neither the place nor the time seemed to be working in my favor. As I turned towards the stairs in defeat, I was confronted with the bulging domes of a mosque. Thinking it might be nice to snatch a view of the ghats from high up, I climbed onto the roof of the mosque and stopped to catch my breath.

I made a few frames, but was more taken by a light breeze rising off the Ganga way below. After some time, I got ready to leave. I put my camera to my eye for one final image of the domes – that central spire kept insisting I look at it. In an instant, just as I was about to press the shutter, a kite wafted into the frame. It twirled this way and that for a second and then delicately came to rest on the dome. I snapped. A moment later, it plunged downward and out of sight.

Photography legend Henri Cartier-Bresson said about his famous “decisive moment”: “Your eye must see a composition for an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.”

I knew there was something in those domes. My intuition took over as soon as the kati patang came into view. Unexpectedly, I had my fresh take on Varanasi. Mosque, instead of temple, and not a sadhu for miles!

A similar experience happened around the same time – the late 1980s – across the border in Rawalpindi where I lived in those days. It was that time of the evening – when light is thick, heavy and almost redemptive – that photographers call the golden hour.

I was walking the streets revelling in the way the sunlight brought life to the wooden family homes around Gawalmandi. My eye was hooked on the grass mat and how it added complexity to the patterned puzzle of the façade. Again, just like the kite in Varanasi, a schoolboy stepped to the window, looking for a friend in the street below. I snapped one frame and moved in closer for another but he retreated. The right place and right time come and go in a 60th of a second.

I consider both of these pictures to be gifts granted to me by some unseen hand or eye. To keep me humble. But also to make me happy and keep me going in the hope that such things will happen again, just a little further down the road.