Day of the Doll

Last year, after doing some minor world travel, I decided a nice way to follow it up would be to head south of the border to check out some Dia de los Muertos celebratio. It would make neat cultural photography. The only thing that went south was the plan itself, as Mexico, at least according to the media, exploded into drug fueled violence, with heads literally rolling. I’m usually the first to say the media exaggerates things, but in terms of being proven wrong, this seemed like tempting fate. I haven’t heard about it this year so much, so maybe it (again, perhaps literally) died down, but truth be told, I completely forgot about my former plan until a couple weeks ago.

Fortunately, it turns out LA has its own Day of the Dead celebration at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Conveniently located indeed, and, at $10 a ticket versus expensive travel costs, a bit more economical.

Day of the Accordion Player

After a warm greeting from this cheery fellow, we snaked past graves, fields, memorials, and somewhat conspicuous port-o-potties, greeted by dozens of booths. Cynicism would come easily to the right type, who might look at the booths offering cultural tchotchkes to tourists, and the fact that the most enthusiastically costumed looked like artsy LA kids, with a degree of high brow snobbery. They would have missed the point. Between the range of costumes, from the bizarre to the incredibly elaborate, were weird moments worth the price of admission alone.

Day of the Upset Undead Children

Scenes like this just disturb and confuse me, so I’ll some it up and just say: ‘Children.’ If you click on it for a larger view, you can see drool dribbling down the chin of the girl on the right, the result of a particularly enthusiastic bout of loud crying. They’re clearly a little young to hate family themed costumes- it looks like they have another five years or so to get to that point- so I’ll go ahead and go with the obvious ‘child leash’ explanation. At that age I would have hated to be on one myself, though I must confess that now I love the idea, especially on other people’s children.

Diverting a ways from snarky:

Day of the Brilliant Costumes

These two had brilliant costumes, probably the best put together I saw all day. Alone they would have been excellent, and paired off, they’re absolutely fantastic. The crisp detail on their faces was really well done, and the way the gent on the right complimented it with a single contact lens was a particularly nice touch. Also, check out the young lady’s tattoos.

Day of the Killer Tats

Well played.

The event started a bit late in the day, so other than some brief, nice afternoon sunlight, it got dark quickly. It seemed like a nice time for some silhouette shots.

Day of the... nighttime.

It’s nice to grab moments like these. I’m more the photographer who asks permission rather than sneak shots, but sometimes you simply can’t resist the opportunity. Not to say of course that the unexpected can’t happen, even when someone realises you’re taking their picture. Portraits are all well and good, but after some time I was looking for something a bit more candid. This woman had taken a seat among the graves to apply her facepaint, and thinking it made a nice little scene, I asked permission to take a few shots. She gladly accommodated, and while I was shooting, one of her children curiously wandered into the scene.

OK, it isn't day anymore

All in all, not a bad way to spend a Saturday night, and I’d recommend checking it out if you can next year. There’s also a wealth of musical performances and food which pictures won’t communicate, and so I won’t even bother. I’ll just finish with one more portrait of that sweet Day of the Dead facepainting.

Calaveras de Azúcar for sale

Calaveras y mariposas

Rooftop shenanigans

We roasted on the way over.  (90 degrees.  Car has no air conditioning.  $1000 to fix.  No thank you sir.)  Once we got there, I found myself surrounded by scantily clad women.  The hottest thing of all though was- you guessed it- the dynamic range I was able to get out of my Nikon.

You can see here that I shot right into the sun, but was still able to get a nice amount of detail in the shadows.  Shooting RAW allows you to pull off shots like this- details in shadows and extremely bright areas can by pulled out in areas usually inaccessible if you’re shooting plain old jpegs.  It takes more processing time, but is worth the extra effort.

That said, I didn’t let digital have all the fun.

Love and peace

Up on the roof

I shot this on the Leica MP rangefinder with a 50mm Summilux ASPH lens, the most brilliantly over-engineered 50mm lens around.  50mm is typically a standard focal length, and is an excellent focal length to learn on.  Henri Cartier-Bresson shot on 50mm almost exclusively.  Keeping all this in mind, I can’t figure out why it’s one of the most glossed over focal lengths around.  Canon, Nikon, Sigma, etc.- none of these companies make a completely solid 50mm 1.4 lens.  Leica’s is great, but it costs an arm and a leg, and I was lucky to find an extremely well priced used one.

For a couple of years, all I had was a Canon AE-1 and 50mm 1.8.  If you’ve got a new SLR/DSLR, I strongly recommend picking up a 50mm equivalent.  If you’re lucky enough to have a full frame camera, a 50mm will do.  More likely than not, you’ve got a crop factor to deal with, in which case a 35mm lens usually does the trick.

By the way, the film I had in the Leica was Fuji Astia slide film.  Incredible stuff.  Not to say the digital didn’t perform admirably.

Nice makeup

Nice hair

I’m not particularly a fan of artificial lighting, so everything was was shot with available light.  At the beginning of the day, the daylight was quite harsh, and shooting indoors with window light or shooting in the shade was in order.  (It was too bloody hot outside anyway.)

In times like these, shots of people waiting around make for comically absurd photojournalism shots.

It's like a Fellini film

The waiting wound up being worth it.  The pay off is the toward the end of the day, when the light got golden and beautiful.

Parasol day dreaming

I’m going to start out with a few photos plus a story here, and then, in a few days (promise!), a slideshow.

You may remember my experiences shooting in India, and how most people there were, in some way, very self-concious about having their photos taken, though that manifested in a variety of ways. Hong Kong was a fairly startling contrast to this.

I was wandering around the streets of Kowloon, just looking for subjects to photograph. Though I’ve heard a lot of people speak English, I found this wasn’t so much the case off the main island. It made for some challenges- I was faced with a language barrier I hadn’t really experienced alone before, so I wasn’t sure how to approach people. Travel was easy- the subway is basically like any major underground system, so I had all sorts of places to go, but was rather lost culturally. Then, it started to rain, and rain heavily.

I headed across the street to shelter, in a small park with covered areas where a bunch of older men were playing a game that looked like Chinese chess. I say a bunch of people were playing, but really, it was mostly a large group intently, and somewhat silently, watching two play. I hung out with them for a bit- quietly enquiring to a couple of them if they spoke any English, which yielded me just a confused look or a quick shaking head, eyes going immediately back to the game. I puzzled over the various approaches I could take, and more minutes passed. Finally, I decided to try a stronger message. I held my camera up, and enunciated clearly- ‘Pictures OK?’ I figured that would be universal.

I could hardly believe it was the same serene group I’d been hanging out with, avoiding the rain, for the past few minutes. This group of old, quiet and stoic guys suddenly lit up. They all looked at me, some smiling broadly, all of them loud and very clear- they were gesticulating and shouting excitedly, ‘yeah, yeah!’

Then, all of a sudden, they stopped.

It’s like they were experts at getting their photos taken. They had absolutely no self conciousness at all- they just completely ignored me. It’s a veritable photojournalist’s dream. This turned out to be more or less the case in Hong Kong- most people were very comfortable with photography, to the point of completely ignoring it. That was also the case with this butcher.

With a few exceptions, most of these vendors were more than happy to have me take photos. Interesting side note to this picture by the way- I’ve found myself surprised at the reactions it elicits, especially negative ones. It seems to have a strong gross out factor. I’m fascinated by this phenomenon. I’m vegetarian, but I really have no problem seeing this cut up meat laid out and presented like this, nor did I have a problem being around it. I’ve found the opposite is true with many of my omnivorous friends, who in some cases are actually quite disturbed by it. I’m curious- what do you think of it? Is it a bit disturbing seeing where your food comes from? (Or, in the case of fellow vegetarians, seeing an animal carved up like this for food?)

Coming up- I did a lot of still life photos in Hong Kong. That’ll be in a slideshow soon enough.