An umbrella shot from above is not a new idea. You’ve seen it in films, in digital art, recreated so many times it’s almost a cliché. But I had never made one myself, and somewhere in the back of my head it was a shot I’d always wanted to try.
Two days ago I was standing on my balcony at around 2 PM. My cook arrives around that time and I step out of my work room to give instructions, then stay for a few minutes. Looking at the Dive Ghat pass and the Sahyadri range behind it, watching the rain, listening to the birds in the trees below. And if I am honest, checking that both motorcycles are still where I parked them. A small pocket of nothing in the middle of a working afternoon.
That day it was drizzling. Walking along the wet road below was a woman with a magenta umbrella, moving briskly. Dark wet pavement, one burst of colour, the angle already perfect from where I was standing. My phone was inside on my desk. By the time I thought about running in to get it, she was gone.
A missed chance, like so many other shots I have waited to go back for and never did in the end.
Today, at around the same time, I was standing in the same spot when I caught a flash of magenta in the corner of my eye. Same umbrella. Same brisk walk. Same road.
I ran inside, grabbed my iPhone 17 Pro, leaned out over the balcony railing and pressed the shutter at 4x zoom.
She was slightly off the third but Lightroom sorted that. What I couldn’t have planned was the grid of the pavement tiles in the upper frame, or the way the wet concrete makes the colour pop harder than it would on a dry day.
I don’t remember the last time I was this happy with something I clicked.
Yesterday I wrote about how it sometimes feels like my roll of film has run out. That I hadn’t made a photograph I was genuinely happy with in a long time.
Photography, for me, has never been about creating something the world has never seen. It’s about finally making something I have always seen in my head.
Maybe all I needed was another thirty-six frames.
See also: 36 Frames
