Photo Story: Carrying Cow Patties in India

In rural India cow dung patties are used as fuel for cooking and heating. The water buffalo gather along the banks of the Yamuna River in Agra, where these cow patties were formed and dried.

Carrying Cow Patties in Agra, India

The ladies in this photo were coming up the hill from the Yamuna River carrying the cow patties they had made and dried. They proceeded to carry these large stacks of cow patties along the main road and across the bridge over the river.

It’s amazing how the Indian ladies can carry such large and heavy loads on their heads over long distances. Visiting Agra, India is like going back in time. It is common to see people carrying goods on their heads and delivering large loads on bicycles instead of the delivery trucks we are used to seeing.

Agra gets hundreds of thousands of tourists each year primarily visiting the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal is amazing and definitely worth visiting and photographing. But I find that Agra is also a gold mine for street photographers.

Carrying Cow Patties Photo Details

Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M1
Lens: Olympus M.ZUIKO 12-50mm F3.5-6.3 EZ Lens
Focal Length: 12mm
ISO: 1250Aperture: f/4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/640 of a second
Exposure Compensation: -3/10
Lighting: Late afternoon, just before sunset

Street Photography Post Processing

Cropped the photo and lightened the shadows in Lightroom 5.
Used the Photo Filter in Topaz Adjust to brighten up the photo and increase saturuation.
Used the multiple Lighten / Darken Center filters in Color Efex Pro 4 using the + control point to control the effect of the filter.

Continued to selectively lightened and darkened the image using Viveza 2 from Google.
Selectively reduced noise in the image using Topaz DeNoise and a layer mask.
Selectively sharpened the image using the Unsharp Mask filter in Photoshop CC 2014.
Applied the Film Efex Vintage filter in Color Efex Pro 4 to give the photo

Written by Martin Belan

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