Bike Against A Wall – Glynn Lavender
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It’s not always about the gear.
Sometimes it’s the mud, the missed turns, the 4am call times or the conversations that happen in between. The moments behind the shot are often just as powerful as the image itself.
In this series, we speak with photographers from all walks of life about the stories behind their work; the behind-the-scenes chaos, the spontaneous camera rigs held together with tape, the interactions with strangers, and everything that got them there. Sometimes you gotta go out of your way to get the shot.
Bike Against A Wall – Glynn Lavender
When running photography tours I love to set challenges for the group. This may be themes of the day such as textures, graffiti, numbers, animals etc.
Shooting images that help build a visual feel of the places we visit and not just the faces of the people we shoot.
Sometimes we get so caught up in photographing our main subject we can miss the chance to capture the essence of the place as a whole.
One of my favourite challenges is the classic travel cliché image of a bike against a wall.
It’s a bit like that classic “lone tree in field of lavender” that we are always striving to capture the perfect version of.
One thing I know for sure is the chances for a “perfect” shot are few and far between so imagine my delight when driving through a small village outside of Varanasi in India, I see not one but TWO old bikes leaning not just against a fabulously textured wall of an ancient building but they are perfectly framed between two fabulously detailed stone arches.
It was a classic scene. Perfectly staged just for us!
A quick call to our driver to pull over a hundred metres or so up the road and we all disembarked and quick stepped our way back down the road to the building.
However, just as we lined up to frame our shots a man, who looked like he had just stepped off the set of an Indiana Jones movie jumped into the scene, grabbed his bike and, with a look of distaste and fear that we were there to take his bike, he quickly rushed off with his bike.
This all happened so fast (he was surprisingly spry) that there was only time for one single frame to be captured.
Like much of travel photography you have but a moment to get the shot or miss it all together and that is fabulous.
The images we miss are often the ones that drive us forward to get better.
If every shot was perfect, we’d probably move onto something else to find a challenge.
Every miss brings you one step closer to your next great shot.
Shot on Tamron 24-70mm F/2.8
I have one great photographic love, and that’s photographing people. I rarely shoot anything that doesn’t have a person in the frame. I run photography workshops in Australia and the USA and lead photo tours to countries such as India, Bangladesh, Tanzania and Myanmar.
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Get The Shot STORIES read more
It’s not always about the gear.
Sometimes it’s the mud, the missed turns, the 4am call times or the conversations that happen in between. The moments behind the shot are often just as powerful as the image itself.
In this series, we speak with photographers from all walks of life about the stories behind their work; the behind-the-scenes chaos, the spontaneous camera rigs held together with tape, the interactions with strangers, and everything that got them there. Sometimes you gotta go out of your way to get the shot.
