“Drive-by Shooting” in Madhya Pradesh, India

I traveled to Central India for a chance to see tigers in the wild. Madhya Pradesh, a central state, has six national parks which offer the opportunity if you’re lucky.

And I was lucky. An amazing wildlife experience, to be sure. But in between national parks, we had to drive several hours through daily life, agricultural fields, small towns with bustling streets and markets. The colors, the scenes, the unexpected moments that passed in a blink — it all came at us in a blur as our driver raced through herds of cows, hordes of people, and around bicycles, motorbikes, heavy trucks, runaway buses, and random pedestrians. Another photography buff traveling with me watched curiously as I started shooting bursts out the vehicle window with my camera. “Drive-by shooting,” I joked. We cranked the ISO and shutter speed of our cameras up as high as they could go for the light levels we had without diminishing quality, turned on the six-frames-per-second burst setting, and flew down the highway trying to capture that perfect shot. Back at the hotel I’d delete the vast majority of them, but keep one or two among a streak of a dozen variations. India is visually stunning enough that with quick reflexes and anticipating an angle, one can nab a fair number of engaging photos even on the fly. Here are some of the results, several of which I uploaded to Instagram later: