A walk on water...

Alot of people have asked me how I shot this unusual photo of a woman walking on water. It always makes me smile, because the trick in it is really small.

Good photos are all about timing.

First things first –the model in this photo is a fantastic ballet dancer –Tanya, who has for years trained in various forms of dancing and has superbly flexible body n on top of that she loves to play with water. Now that is quite important, that people should love doing –whatever they are doing, n end results are invariably good!

She happened to be playing a significant role in a documentary film which I was shooting in M.P. (India), and while going to the location, we crossed this small river which wasn’t exactly too deep. She got excited, jumped off the jeep n next moment was playing around with water. Somehow instinctively she seemed to have found a spot which was quite shallow. I stared at her amusedly for a while from the jeep, but then impatience took over me as the light was dropping fast…

She was adamant upon not leaving the spot till I shot a picture of her playing with water. So I came upon this idea n told her to find a spot which had just very little water for her to stand comfortably, yet enough to make a splash when she jumped. It was a little tricky as she had to give enough thrust to create the splash, jump forward n then kind of balance herself to look it like she is floating or walking on water, n I had to shoot this at high shutter speed, get my timing correct to catch her in mid-air, keep her in focus n catch the water as well to get the desired feel.

The beauty of this photograph is that it was a one take shot n i shot it while sitting in the jeep. We couldn’t have spent more time on the spot as we were getting late for the video shoot n locals were gathering quite fast, amused at the sight of a beautiful foreigner playing with water in the middle of a jungle !

Sometimes good pictures just happen…like this “walk on water”…