Photographer Simon King shares the process he went through in documenting a Hindu sea procession at a British seaside town.
Each year around the world Hindu communities join together in a 10-day celebration of one of their mainstream deities, Ganesha. This celebration takes place in either August or September , and festivities take many forms across the Hindu diaspora.
Iconic events like this are cornerstones for our project, as they see gatherings of community far beyond what you can expect to see on an average day at a Mandir. We are able to make new connections and network while photographing, which eventually leads to greater trust and access, meaning we can work on our project in more intimate settings, for more personal and private documentation of people’s homes, families, and daily lives.
There were some unique challenges posed by this culmination of the celebration, as two towering idols and a multitude of smaller ones were carried out far into the ocean. The first was entirely psychological and the easiest to overcome: the temperature of the late September seawater. We did our best to time our reloads so that we would be entering the water with fresh rolls of film, giving us 72 images each across two cameras before we’d need to reload again, something we didn’t especially want to do in the water. Sagar ended up needing to reload his F301, but only when he was waist deep, luckily not when he was further out. He had his rolls safely in a shoulder pocket of his shirt, which kept them relatively dry.
I often wanted to position myself quite low in the water so that it occupied a bit less of my frame and so that the horizon wouldn’t be in the dead center, but the waves were unpredictable and would overwhelm me when I thought I’d timed it right to bend down. I realized that with my front element wet I wouldn’t be able to clean it as I didn’t have a dry cloth at that point, but through the viewfinder, I could only see a slight loss of contrast, nothing major.
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