An Evening at Qutub

Second Photowalk at Qutub
June 8, 2008
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Well I know, its been some time since I wrote into my journal, I guess its been quite uneventful couple of weeks, with respect to anything creative that I did (except downloading loads of music and cataloging and burning disks out of the same).


Anyway, so a photowalk was scheduled for June 8, 2008, venue was Qutub (which made it our second walk to Qutub) and the idea was to capture shades of evening with Qutub as the backdrop. I must admit that the idea definitely looked good on paper, how it turned out to be overall is a different story.

We did lose some steam on reaching the venue. To begin with, we were met by a long queue at the ticket counter. Incidentally (and this is for the benefit of the readers as well) Qutub opens up for general public in the evenings from 7:00 p.m to 08:30 p.m. It is advised that you reach a little before time since the parking space, though free, is limited and un-manned.

As soon as you reach the place it becomes evident that there is little thinking involved in the adopted process of admission too. As mentioned earlier the time for entry is 1900 hrs. however, the ticket window does not open until 5 - 10 minutes past 7 p.m. which implies that the time one can actually make an entry is further delayed. A better idea, as most of the readers and people who have had the Qutub's evening experience would agree would be to open the ticket counter a little earlier and allow people to wait at the gate (which is a much larger area) than to be cramped up in huddles and queues at the little courtyard infront of the ticket counter.

And as evident in most such places, you also need to deal with the street smart characters who remain oblivious to the people in the queue and sneak their wrist in the tiny slot at the counter and grab the tickets and shamelessly spit their 'gutkhas' literaaly on the dustbin rather than inside them.


Somehow we managed to get the tickets and moved to the entrance where a 'polite' constable of the Delhi Police wanted to know if we were carrying Video Cameras. Apparently, while you can take a normal still camera (even if it is digital) without any restriction inside the monument, there is a small charge on carrying a movie camera. However, how they categorize and classify a digital camera capable of shooting videos (which all the models allow) from a handy cam beats me. So, we all vouched that we had still cameras and walked in.

It was a nice cool summer evening and we could manage some decent shots in the evening. It was disappointing to know that the portion which remained open in the evening was only a third of what is open for public in the daytime. This considerably restricted the kind of shots that we could take.

Also the overall lighting and illumination of the monument was a let down. The place was poorly lit to allow only a few decent shots. In fact as we grouped together for a snap of the photowalkers for the blog, another 'polite' guard informed us that though you could sit and could keep your bags and camera and other equipment on the ground, it was prohibited to place a tripod inside the monument.
The evening descended sooner than we expected and after a few blind shots in the dark and some deliberate 'shadowy' captures we called it a day. I guess the best moments on the walk were when the group huddled around the two graves near the iron pillar and chatted for a while.

Overall, it was more of an enjoyable walk than a fruitful photo-walk. Check out the pictures from this photo-walk as taken by Himanshu, Vidhi and Puneet, here. (These are consolidated into one album)