Connections with Cameras

I’m a big fan of David duChemin at Pixelated Image. He has a gift (and learned skill) for candid portraiture in challenging environments, is a great writer, and his books are wonderful. I strongly recommend that you check them out. I’ve recently been reading his book “Vision and Voice”. It is a book about how to use Adobe Lightroom to better express your vision. Importantly it isn’t a technical manual but emphasizes how to make an image, once out of camera, show the viewer what you really want them to see…and feel. It is as much philosophy as instruction, and has inspired me to go back and revisit some images I made a few years ago in Peru.

I met this man on the Plaza de Armas in Cuzco, Peru. There were huge protests going on the streets, many thousands of people marching against proposed privatization of public lands in the Sacred Valley. It was peaceful and extraordinary, with indigenous groups, environmentalists, students, archeologists, and farmers all coming together. But I’m getting off track. This man wasn’t involved in the protests, and I found him sitting on a bench, just watching the passersby. A number of things caught my eye about him, but what made me pause was the old medium format camera he had strung around his neck. I stopped and sat next to him on the bench and asked him in spanish about his camera. We chatted for bit, and I struggled to understand his heavily accented speech. But we were both photographers, and connected over this fact. Eventually I asked to make his portrait, and he willingly agreed.

I’ve always liked this image, and its one of my favorites from that two-month trip through Peru and Bolivia. With inspiration from David duChemin, I re-processed the image in Lightroom, bringing up the brightness in his face, darkening and slightly blurring the background to limit the distractions, and adjusting the saturation and white balance to better reflect that dim, overcast day. As much as I liked the image before, I like it even better now.

Oh, my one regret? I didn’t include his camera in the shot. Dammit.

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