NZPhotographer Issue 53, March 2022

MARKETS
There are several market areas from where to start
your photographic adventure. Close to the city
centre and Saddar Town is the best and easiest
to access market built under the reign of Queen
Victoria, a beautiful colonial building called Empress
Market. Here you can find fruit and vegetable
sellers, nuts, spices and grains, dry goods, in fact,
all kinds of food products. The stallholders are very
friendly, many speak some basic English and all
are happy to be photographed. It’s really such a
pleasure to be in cities or countries where a motion
towards the camera always produces a yes, please
photograph me, and his friend lines up and says,
me too! A good walkabout lens is always handy in
these predicaments, any focal range from 24-105mm
will cover most situations. I put on my 50mm for
something different and instead of using the zoom to
frame my shot, moved my feet. It’s often good for the
creative mind to put the onus on yourself to capture
the composition you’re after instead of having the
luxury of zooming in or out to fill the frame. I found this
worked well and using my lens’ wide aperture created
some nice background bokeh in my shots.
ARABIAN SEA COASTLINE
Blessed with a beautiful, but sadly neglected coastline
Karachi has what has to be the craziest beach in all
the world, Clifton Beach, Seaview! All day long and
well into sunset the beach where the gentle waves of
the Arabian Sea reach the shore is lined with all the
excitement of a carnival. There are camels, horses,
dune buggies, men selling chaat (snacks), drinks,
balloons, and there are families and domestic tourists
by the thousands all day and every evening long.
Just being there is like participating in a show. As the
sun sets across the Arabian Sea you can silhouette
a passing camel, and photograph all the carnival
happenings as you witness something that you’ll see
nowhere else. Your best lens here is both a landscape
lens with a wide focal length and a telephoto even
up to 200mm so as to separate the subject from the
foreground and compress the distance between your
subject and the setting sun. My advice, go twice
with a different set up on each occasion if you’re not
lucky enough or comfortable carrying two bodies and
lenses.
Delicious chicken tikka on skewers for the evening diners at Burns Road.
Canon 6D Mk1, Canon 16-35mm F/2.8L III USM lens @ F2.8, 1/160s, ISO500, 19mm
NZPhotographer
March 2022
59