"Lit in gold, sparkled in white"

On the last day of my Bharatpur trip, I didn't want to spend my day in the hotel under the pretext of 'nothing new to see' especially if the primary objective of the trip was photography. "Although factually accurate, the same nature can present itself in a myriad different forms," I thought. So with a hopeful ambition to sight sarus cranes from a close distance, I left for the Keoladeo sanctuary.

Towards the end of the day, I and my travel mate, Ritansh, decided to explore one last uncharted pathway within the sanctuary. While I was busy trying to photograph a hoopoe, who kept flying off sensing even the slightest human presence, Ritansh wandered around deeper on to the pathway. Later, when I signaled him to come back so that we could leave, he flagged me to come over to the area where he was. I perceived this alarm to be an opportunity worthy of photography and it indeed was.

Blocked fawn

Lit in gold, sparkled in white

I brisk walked to the place of call and found a spotted deer with her fawn grazing grass on an island-like grassland. "A sight I haven't seen over the past days," I pondered and decided to get as close as possible to capture a decent picture of the two.

I learned a wee bit of 'waiting for the moment' that nature may or may not transpire that day. I got a few fantastic shots of the deer. But something was amiss. The adorable fawn in the scene was blocked either by a truncated tree on the left or thorns on the right. "Oh God, give me that one great moment where I can lock the mother and fawn into an unfading memory," I hoped. In the next 15-20 minutes that I spent watching them, my wish was granted. The beautiful golden light of dusk nailed the instant as "lit in gold, sparkled in white" with both of the looking at me with hoisted ears.

I was so consumed and gloated in the glory of this moment that I missed another grand flash that nature ensued in the next few minutes. The mother decided to cross the surrounding water wetland. I was so engrossed in getting the two of them again in the same frame that I lost focus on the mother which in solitude would have been a fantastic wet-water-shot. Lesson learned. "Better presence of mind, next time," I told myself and moved on.

Ready to cross

Missed opportunity

Okay, I am lying about moving on. I do sulk sometimes over the missed opportunities in my life as a photographer. Fortunately, I am glad that my personal life boasts of no events that I classify as "missed opportunities". As far as personal life goes, "the best is yet to come."