Three people at work
As soon as I read about the first assignment I made a long list of possible subjects and quickly went out to try to get in contact with them. I was in such a hurry that I didn’t wait for the brief and that’s why I broke a couple of rules in the first session: I shot with a 28mm and a lot more than 100 pictures.
Shoot 1: Sortijas Race, San Antonio Abad Festivity.
I went to a traditional horse racing event. I arrived quite early, about an hour and half before the race, and only Isidro and his very nervous horse Cantador were there. I went straight to them and started talking. Isidro was quite the opposite to his ’entero’ horse: a quiet, peaceful man who, very nicely, explained to me all about the race and his horse. I didn’t ask him directly for permission to take pictures, I just got my camera out and started shooting in a natural way, keeping up with the conversation as if the camera wasn’t there. He didn’t show any discomfort with it, he just kept taking care of Cantador and waiting as, I guess, he would had done hadn’t I been there.
Focusing was my main problem all the time. In fact I found myself many times trying to focus as if I had the autofocus on.
The other thing is that I kept looking at the screen and thinking of cropping options for the images I had just shot. I had to continuously tell myself to pay more attention to the whole frame while shooting and forget about the post processing ideas.
I didn’t shoot with the b&w setting in the camera, I converted then later to b&w, and well, not sure if that might be the reason why I prefer them in colour. I find that the red and the green work better than the b&w in some of the images.
Shoot 2: painting furniture.
This guy is a friend of friend who I contacted in order to do some piece of furniture for my house. I went to his workshop to see colour options for a desk and, while there, I managed to arrange a photo session for a few days later. We immediately felt at easy talking and he was ok with me moving around while he was working.
I used the 24-70 mm lens fixed at 35 mm, although sometimes it accidentally moved. Again my main problem here was the focus, this time even more complicated as he was moving quite fast from one side of the room to the other .
Shoot 3: the craftsman, making baskets
When I went out looking for a third subject I got a little bit frustrated. I asked for permission in a barber shop and in a shoe repair shop and they both said no. I can perfectly understand why some people may not want their pictures taken, and yet, it didn’t feel good. As the deadline was approaching, I knew there were two options here: friends of friends of friends…, or craftsmen. None of these would say no. So I went out to look for this man I had seen a few times in roundabout near my house. He does baskets inside his truck parked in a few places around. I thought he had been doing that for his whole life but, to my surprise, that was not the case: “only for about a year”. Before he used to be a builder but the economical crisis has taken him back to his parents’ craft.
Normally, in this ‘inside the truck’ situation I would had chosen a 28 mm lens but this time I went for the 50 mm and I actually felt quite comfortable with having the chance to move a few steps backwards from my usual positioning.
In general, I am not all that happy with images resulting from these three sessions. But, to be honest, I am quite proud on how it all went on the social part involved in approaching people to do this kind of work. It got me to places I had never been before and it opened doors which, although not used for this assignment, I hope to get back to them in near future projects.
