Vibrant, contrasts, grainy & verdant.
The first day I feel like I’m missing things. It has been a while since I have been in the field and I am a moment behind the images. I see the pictures but not through my viewfinder. The next day, my timing is there, but the mirror briefly obscures the pictures I want. The great moments I can’t see.
That night, taking a cue from my unusual surroundings, I hear a certain song and it reminds me to look for a certain picture. Something I think I thought I understood yesterday, but wasn’t able to grasp.
Walking, walking and more walking. The light is golden near the horizon and the temperature has dropped as the magic hour approaches. The time is now. The ingredients are falling into place. Things are just the way they need to be. My experience, my instincts and my vision are coalescing.
I stop and make a few notes glancing up, from time to time to make sure I’m not missing anything. Then I work, and nothing else matters. Forget about everything and just be a photographer. Visualize. The puzzle forms in my mind, vertical, horizontal, transition, layers, light and timing.
Sometimes the pieces fit together, and other times I know I have nothing more than a group of parts. Maybe tomorrow will show me what I need; maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to complete a part of the envisioned spread? Passion, awareness, understanding and humor all play a role in creating great images. But so does location; and Peru, with its unique culture, historical contexts and inviting locals is the perfect place to begin making the first strokes on the visual canvas that will be your own, personal photo book.
Documentary photography allows the practitioner to completely immerse oneself in one’s project. During minutes, hours and days, the work develops, eventually forming an in depth body or storyline. Documentary style photography, in many ways, is perfectly suited for book form. Books allow work to be shown as individual art, as a story, or as an essay, and the book itself also stands alone as its own separate statement. How we bridge the need to make individual images which are unique unto themselves and then continuously consider the entire story as well is a difficult task but one that has become easier with some modern technological tools.
