December 2006

Kicking Up Dust
Photograph by Anil Kumar Shakya, Allahabad, India

"Heat is the enemy of seasonal fruits and vegetables," says photographer Anil Kumar Shakya, who captured this image of farmers hurrying to beat soaring temperatures—and the resultant plummeting prices—at an early morning market in Allahabad, India. Shakya, who took the photo while studying photojournalism last April, found a low spot that placed the sun behind his subjects, providing more of a backlight than a glare. "The tonal range of the background—along with the dust flying around the farmer's feet and the way the light hits the fruit in his basket—is one of my favorite things."

Photo Critique
By Susan Welchman, Illustrations Editor

This is a beautifully composed frame with small elements of design such as the dust at their feet, the way their clothes are either blowing or rolled, and just the hint of melons in the biggest basket. It's a very nice, easy frame to take in. It's subtle. It could be blown up into a huge picture for your wall, and you wouldn't get tired of looking at this. You wonder where they're headed, how the photographer happened to be a bit lower than they are. You're not too sure. But the vantage point is perfect, even down to the small hole in the hand that dangles from the farthest-most figure. The fingers aren't really closed. There are many areas of negative space that you can get interested in, all the spaces between the arms, the heads, and the bodies. They're almost as interesting as the figures coming at you. It's a timeless photograph.

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