The Authentic Youth Union

Two members of 'El Autentico Union Juvenil de La Paz' (The Authentic Youth Union from La Paz) lug their instruments up the hill in Copacabana, Bolivia. Canon 5D Mark II camera and Canon 24-105mm f4L IS USM lens. Exposure Details: 1/500 second @ f4 ISO 400.

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I grabbed this shot during the fiesta in Copacabana, Bolivia I’ve been blogging about for the past couple of weeks. These two guys (amongst others) were lugging their gear up the hill towards another churchground and the main area for the night’s festivities. I think a number of things make this shot work. One is the kind of Abbey Road symmetry going on with the two subject’s legs. Another are the kind of compositional triangles that are formed between the main points of interest (the legs, heads of the two figures and the red drum). Finally the glance in my direction that the front drummer made is what completes the moment. The lighting was not ideal but everything else seems to make up for it. It’s not a wow shot, but I somehow kept coming back to it browsing through my collection so I threw it up here. I find it subtly pleasing, and like my last post from this fiesta it could work as an album cover. Was the music affecting my composition that day?

Still a ways to go before I’ll be moving on from Bolivian fiestas.

Cam.

In front of the lens in Bolivia

Myself (Cam Cope) trying on a 'morenada' dance costume with new friends at a fiesta in San Pedro, La Paz province, Bolivia. Canon 5D Mark II camera and Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM lens. Exposure Details: 1/400 second @ f2.5 ISO 640.

Myself (Cam Cope) trying on a 'morenada' dance costume at a fiesta in San Pedro, La Paz province, Bolivia. Canon 5D Mark II camera and Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM lens. Exposure Details: 1/400 second @ f2.5 ISO 640.

Diptych of myself (Cam Cope) trying on a 'morenada' dance costume at a fiesta in San Pedro, La Paz province, Bolivia. Canon 5D Mark II camera and Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM lens. Exposure details for both images: 1/400 second @ f2.5 ISO 640.

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Standing out at a Bolivian fiesta is unavoidable when you’re a six-foot gringo running around with a beefy camera. Not that standing out is something I wanted to avoid. In fact I’ve found through the years that rather than trying to hide behind the camera, it is far better to use it as a tool to meet and interact with people. When you approach people openly either before or after taking a photo, and share what you are doing with them, suspicion evaporates 99% of the time. At events like festivals, where people are essentially engaged in visual performance, you have a very strong social license to photograph people you don’t know (yet). And so it was that in the San Pedro fiesta that not only did I meet many people through my photography, but I was warmly welcomed and even invited to participate in a ‘morenada‘ dance (after being invited to more than a few beers I might add). I couldn’t resist the chance to try on one of the elaborate costumes that had been on display all day, and after having gotten to know a group of dancers, I could trust them with my camera while I danced.

So after 58 posts on this humble blog, some photographs of myself have finally turned up. They may not be all fine examples of photography but I think they convey a good sense of the fun going on that day. Enjoy them while they last, they’re a rare sight.

Cam.

Bolivian Brass

Diptych of Bolivian musicians during a fiesta in San Pedro. Photographs taken on a Canon 5D Mark II camera and Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM lens. Exposure Details: Left - 1/400 second @ f2.8 ISO 200. Right: 1/400 second @ f2.8 ISO 200.

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It seems that this month’s Bolivian Fiesta theme has so far been dominated by diptychs. I find diptychs tend to work best when they display two photographs taken in the same place around the same time. This is because the photographs will usually have been taken under similar lighting conditions and will thus involve similar colour schemes. This just seems to make complimentary conditions for any pair (or more I suppose) to be displayed together. Then I find it’s just a matter of choosing the right themes, aspect ratios and compositions that work well together.

In this diptych I’m presenting two portraits of musicians from the same band shot at the same time and under the same lighting conditions. Here not only is the light working in favour of their co-presentation, but also the theme (brass players), the matching colours in their uniform and the reflection like composition of the two horn instruments leading into one another in the top-centre of the diptych.

I photographed these characters at the San Pedro fiesta I attended in April.

More to come soon, why not like the facebook page in the meantime? It will like you too.

Cam.

Feathers of a flute man

Feather cape detail diptych from Bolivian flute performer. Photographs taken on a Canon 5D Mark II camera and Canon 24-105mm f4L IS USM lens. Exposure Details for both images: 1/640 seconds @ f4 ISO 1000.

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As promised in my last post here are detail photographs of the feathers worn by the most unique flute players I’ve ever seen, at one of the most entertaining fiestas I’ve ever attended. I counted at least 500 feathers on each cape worn by the flute players. It of course begs the question where the hell do they get them from? What kind of bird are they and how many does it take to make one of these outfits? Like many things about Bolivia, these questions remain a mystery for me. I only hope I’ll be back some day to find out.

More to come soon.

}}}}——-Cam——>>

March of the flute men

Performer plays flute during a fiesta in San Pedro, La Paz province, Bolivia. Canon 5D Mark II camera and Canon 70-200mm f2.8L IS USM lens. Exposure Details: 1/1250 seconds @ f3.5 ISO 400.

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The Bolivian Fiesta collection is starting to reveal itself as I get a roll on with this month’s theme. Here’s another gem from the San Pedro fiesta I attended back in April this year. This man was part of a troop of flutists who are famous for touring the country’s fiesta circuit and playing flutes while wearing distinctive parrot feather and jaguar skin cape-like costumes.

Stay tuned to see those feathers.

Cam.

San Pedro Mountain Fiesta

Fiesta celebrations in San Pedro, La Paz province, Bolivia. Photographs taken on a Canon 5D Mark II camera and Canon 24-105mm f4L IS USM lens. Exposure Details, left: 1/400 seconds @ f10 ISO 250, right: 1/400 seconds @ f10 ISO 320.

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Keeping the fiesta theme rolling here is a diptych from San Pedro, a tiny village in the mountains of Laz Paz province, Bolivia. Just like the 4WD pictured, I hitched a ride on a ute for over an hour sandwiched between moustachioed trumpet players and piles of bulky costumes. We cut along a hair-raising dirt track that clung to the side of a near-vertical valley. On each turn we sent dust and gravel over a ledge roughly 800 metres above the river. The trumpet-men around me joked in Aymara and laughed at my pitiful attempts to pronounce any expressions. Occasionally traffic would bank up as a vehicle coming from the other direction tried to squeeze past in one of the few places where the road was wide enough. When we arrived I had made a team of friends that would invite me to many beers and even insist I try on a costume for a dance… but I’m saving that story for another post, all shall come in time. This is the month of Bolivian fiesta shots afterall.

Don’t forget you can click on the image above to see it enlargened, I know these diptychs come out a little small in the blog post thread.

Till next post.

Cam.

Fiesta en Bolivia

A dancing Bolivian abuela twirls her matraca, a musical instrument used during fiestas. Canon 5D Mark II camera and Canon 24-105mm f4L IS USM lens. Exposure Details: 1/8 seconds @ f4 ISO 800. Flash fired.

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As mentioned in my previous post, this month I’m featuring a great collection of photographs I took during three fiestas in Bolivia earlier this year.

I took this photo in the main square of a town called Sorata in the province of La Paz in the Andes of Bolivia’s west. It was the first night of festivities kicking off a three day fiesta that also included a small village called San Pedro about an hour’s drive away.

I like the way this image captures the movement of the dancers but at the same time freezes the action up front and centre. The expression on this dancer’s face makes her appear to be dreaming, adding an extra surreal quality to that already created by the interaction of movement and frozen action in the image. This is especially true right around the bowler hat and face of the dancer, right where your eye is naturally drawn too.

More to come soon.

Hasta la proxima, Cam.

Bolivian Character

Diptych of Bolivian musician during a fiesta in San Pedro. Photographs taken on a Canon 5D Mark II camera and Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM lens. Exposure Details: Left - 1/125 second @ f2.5 ISO 6400. Right: 1/160 second @ f2.8 ISO 5000.

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In late April this year I was travelling through western Bolivia on my way to Peru. After seeing a photo in a coffee table photo-book I made an impulse detour to visit a place called Sorata. The photograph showed a town clinging to a mountainside above an apparently bottomless valley. Above rose fully cultivated hillsides of impossible incline and glacier capped mountains. The vertical scale in the photograph reminded me of Nepal and after months of summer in Brazil I was ready for some more temperate mountain air.

I arrived just as the town became engulfed in fiesta. For the next three days I was swept away in an endless deafening parade of marching brass bands, elaboarte costume dances and free flowing beer and chicha (a maize-based drink). There were many great moments and despite my generally inebriated state I managed to capture a nice collection of images from the festivities. I’ll be sharing them over the course of the next month beginning today with this Diptych of a trumpet player I hung out with for some beers during a break in the marching.

More to come soon =D

And don’t forget you can click on the image to see it in an enlargened size.

Happy Halloween / Feliz día de los Muertos

Cam.