This inebriation doesn’t wane away. It lingers on and follows even when one wanders away from what causes it. This is the kind of insobriety that one doesn’t have to worry about. Ladakh – a paradise of mountains and valleys in Kashmir – is what we are talking about.
And this year, our High on the Himalayas – Ladakh July 2017 Travel Photography Tour has yielded some of the most exquisite images of the great mountains and lakes of the place. We bring these high doses of beauty to you here:
A little monk in Hemis Monastery poses for our photography maestro Rajiv Shyamsundar to capture his innocence and his mysterious nonchalance. Making portraits of Ladakhis will bring more colours to the idea of portraiture in your mind. With his robes in stark contrast with the dim walls, this image is made more interesting by the huge prayer wheel in the backdrop.
A calm monk stares far into the mountains from where he stands at Hemis Monastery. Photography Tour Skipper Rajiv has stopped to make an image from behind the monk as the doorway looks like it was made for an artistic image like this. Presence of mind and imagination can lead the artist in you to make images like these that can converse with an onlooker.
A bunch of little monks gathered just before the annual event, Hemis Festival, at the Hemis Monastery. Some stare right at the camera and some lost in thought and some pensive… Making candid shots of people in Ladakh can be really interesting, and sometimes such pictures can give a glimpse of their daily life details, depicting their culture as well.
More monks in another frame here, sitting by a wall with vibrant Buddhist paintings. When you walk into such a scene in a monastery in the great mountains, a photograph is inevitable. When Rajiv saw these alluring bright colours – of the paintings on the wall and of the gorgeous maroon shade of the monks’ robes – a photograph like this was bound to happen.
Shanti Stupa lit by artificial lights, standing in all its majesty on a mountain in the dying light of the day. As the sky over Ladakh mountains began to bleed blue, Rajiv couldn’t help but capture the contrast and give the sight its justified share in this frame. Opportunities such as these are always waiting to take shape in these great heights.
On the way to Nubra Valley, Hunder Sand Dunes is a place you wouldn’t want to miss stopping for. Photographically, Hunder Sand Dunes have always made us stop for them, and thankfully so. Almost every person who visits Ladakh spends time here and for photographers, there is many an opportunity for some exotic frames containing these delicately formed sand dunes with mighty mountains lining them.
A seldom-visited door becomes a part of a mind-blowing photo with mountains in the backdrop and some clouds for a dramatic effect. It only took Rajiv some imaginative thinking to make this image as he was just walking past the door. And it also helped that the colours that he captured in this frame were already charmingly contradicting one another.
The evening light struggles to kiss the lake and the mountains because of the cloud-shadow that itself has created! Skipper Shyamsundar couldn’t resist capturing the fragile golden light that still managed to tiptoe through the contingent of clouds set afloat over the lake Moriri (Tso Moriri). In any given condition, Tso Moriri always offers great photography opportunities.
Flowering shrubs and low grass spring from the Earth among rocks and jagged mountains. On the way back from Tso Moriri, the group of Photo Tour participants led by Skipper Rajiv stopped at this place to make some stunning images of the landscape in the Himalayas. That’s the best part about photography in Ladakh – you get these random opportunities to make art even when you least intend to until that moment.
A surreal image of yellow flowers and low grass at the foothills of brown and burnt sienna mountains. Somewhere on the Leh-Manali highway, just before Leh, Rajiv decided to stop for a few minutes to make some dreamy images such as this one. Participants of the Photo Tour are always taken aback by surprises that every turn brings to them on their journey in the great mountains of Ladakh.
A blue sky speckled with clouds over the blue waters of Tso Moriri, mountains looking smooth and gaily snow-kissed and golden-light-kissed! Skipper Shyamsundar makes one more dramatic image at the Lake Moriri to show how drastically the moods of the weather can change in the mountains and valleys in Ladakh.
A few horses graze by a small lake before Tso Moriri and make the landscape even more charming. The Ladakh Photo Tour participants gleefully made images like these only a couple of weeks ago. The spectacular colours at play always pique and kindle the imagination of a photographer and the eventuality is always photographs such as this one.
Among the meditative mountains stand two monks who also look meditative. On the way to Pangong Tso, Rajiv politely approached the monks and made this evocative image after they obliged. The scales of the monks and of the mountains have been cleverly played with by the image-maker, making the photograph as serene as it can get.
Perhaps the most epic of all the images made on our Ladakh July 2017 Photo Tour! One scene where pretty much all seasons have come together – sunlight spilling on the mountains in the far right corner; mild snowing and also drizzle; and to make it even more breathtakingly, incredibly and also ominously beautiful, the delightful treat of double rainbows that are intense and not soft! The participants and the Skipper couldn’t have asked for more when they were at Tso Moriri; a brilliant moment in time they didn’t miss for our great fortune, this image.
If you wish to create your own gallery of spectacular landscape photographs, sign up for our next High on the Himalayas – Ladakh Landscape Photography Tour now!