Point and Shoot

About a year back, I got myself a pocket-sized Canon ‘Point and Shoot’ with the intention of recording some of my bicycling trips.

I have no technical knowledge and take the camera nomenclature very seriously: I point. I shoot. Mostly I end up pointing at and shooting my friends Ranjan and Mohit as they happen to be the ones I often go cycling with.

Mohit, being an art director, is at ease with photography and also carries a camera. His method is loosely based on George Bush’s tactics during the invasion of Iraq: Carpet Bombing. He shoots everything in sight and then uploads it on Google Earth.

Ranjan, like typical writers, doesn’t see the point of the whole thing. He’d rather be climbing another 1000 meters instead of being asked to pose in a certain way because the light is falling right just there.

I, on the other hand, unsure about my photography skills, fret over each picture. Since I also don’t know any Photoshop, I spend a long time trying to frame the perfect shot before either saving it for posterity or consigning it to the trash can. This can hold up the cycling for hours and it irks Ranjan no end.

“I have realised we don’t go on bicycling trips any more,” he complained bitterly to us as we reached for our cameras during a break on the way to Lansdowne. “We go on photography trips. The bikes are merely props and I am the model you take along.”

Looking at our cycling pictures is a bit like flipping through marriage albums. It’s the same picture repeated over and over again, with the occasional unknown character or location thrown in. The main difference is that while people usually get married only once, we go on cycling trips every three months or so.

While we combine cycling and photography, I have come to realise that we don’t do either very competently. As Mohit once put it, “We probably shoot as well as Lance Armstrong and cycle as well as Ansel Adams".



Ranjan just hates being photographed.


One of our numerous bike-against-wall shots. This one
is enhanced by the presence of a young man who turned
up to clean our rundown hotel room in Lansdowne.


A local cyclist we met on the way to Ranthambore.


Ranjan refuses to pose, but that never stops me.


Restless Mohit posing for me in Lansdowne.


Ranjan writing his memoirs in a hotel in Ambala where
we stopped on our way to Kasauli. It was one of the
better hotels we stayed in. It had things like a chair
and a light bulb.