Dinesh Khanna is an Indian photographer, who specializes in travel photography, and showcases his love for color in his two books, Bazaar and Living Faith. I'm impressed by the perfectionism of his imagery...but let me also make the important distinction that he is more of a 'commercial' travel photographer than a documentary travel photographer. His images are stylized and beautiful, and his color sense among the best I've recently seen. Reaffirming his style, he describes some of his successful photographs as being staged. You'll see in one of his gallery an image of camels wading through the Yamuna river behind the Taj Mahal. While obviously color-enhanced, this image was used very successfully in advertisements for India Tourism.
Here are excerpts of what Dinesh says about color:
" Color is almost a language in India. It's in food, clothes, on walls, in architecture. Color is such an integral part of life that to take it away would be killing a part of the story. As a photographer, I find color challenging. Black-and-white photography is easier because it makes the image alien to the way the mind sees things. Color is always around us. To transcend that, to show reality the way it is, and yet, have an interesting composition or an interesting moment is far more challenging.
Absolutely! Color is a language in India...it's a way to communicate, influence and swamp the senses. Color is what pulls many photographers to this wonderful country. For me, India has three irresistible magnetic fields: its people, its art of devotion and its language of color. Language of color...yes, I'm grateful to Dinesh to have shared this expression.
Dinesh's website is here. I recommend his galleries which are titled Staged Street and Books.
