<- Click hereThe friendly natives do their ancient dance to the sunset on Tower Beach, Hilton Head Island, SC.
And so day two ends in the Heart of Dixie. Um, it's NOT a dry heat. A technical note. I've borrowed a Canon lens from a friend... a 70-300 mm with image stabilization. I can't seem to hold it steady even in the intense light of sunset.So I decided to make lemonade here. I realized that I was having problems with the lens, so I intended to capture the children as abstracts of color, form and motion. I thought I'd try to distill out childhood joy at sunset. The results make me happy. As for the lens, I don't think I'll buy one like it.
OOOPS! When you discuss a sunset, guess you need to show the sunset, Eh?
Sooooo... Okay, here's what the natives celebrate every night on Tower Beach.
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For those who follow this sort of thing, here're the dancer images from the FlashCard
4 comments:
Ted, I love it when you do squares. Probably I'd love it when anybody did squares, but nobody does, so that's academic :)
This sunset is pure pleasure, and it's also wonderful what you did with these children, and finally it's fantastic that you didn't get caught and thrown to jail for photographing them.
I had an interesting experience recently. On my way to work I went through a local park, photographing trees in the early morning light, when two girls, maybe something around 15 years (I am not good at judging ages) came by and asked me friendly, if I would take a photograph of them. I was a bit in a hurry but I did so, and just as I gave them my card and asked them to send me a mail, so that I could reply with the image, an aggressive mob appeared, all children between maybe 10 and 16, and asked me what I did there and why I took photographs of the girls and ... it was extremely annoying. Reminds me of Bruce Schneier's article in The Guardian, "Are photographers really a threat?". Needless to say that I never got a mail from the girls. Well, obviously I would have raped them by email. Seems like we have come a long way towards general distrust.
The thing is, that only men are really targeted as child molesters and terrorists. Women can still wander the playgrounds, cameras clicking, with impunity. Street child photography is no longer a genre for men.
I've never done much of it, but I frequently see an expression of great joy, or tenacity, or determination in the faces and body language of children which is simply not available elsewhere. I have a photographer acquaintance who is even shy of taking pictures of his own children at play in public places. He just doesn't want the hassle from mothers who have been trained that men are beasts... and who train their children accordingly.
Not sure what this generation will be like when the young princes and princesses reach coronation age.
PS... as for these pictures I had two protections from social attack. First I had a white beard, a lovely wife, and my in-laws all in tow. The presented a certain image of propriety. And secondly I was using a 70-300mm lens cranked out to an effective 450mm. As you can see from the originals, I cropped them even farther. So the distance added another dimension of invisibility.
Well, I see :)
I think there is a clear trend against trust between people. It all began with what I call the "conservative backlash" (Ronald Reagan, Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II within one year, in an environment of Americans held hostage in Iran shortly before, Anwar Sadat's death shortly afterwards), and 9/11 was the final catastrophe. Well, you may disagree with the first part :)
Still, I see a strange climate of distrust and xenophobia, and at the same time young people seem prude, compared to people of my age. For instance, I like to swim naked. There are many places for that, in Carinthia as well as in Vienna, but the funny thing is, you don't see young people in these places. It's roughly my age and above. At the same time you see a proliferation of pornography. Hmm ... but that's not individual freedom of living or of expression, that's an industry :)
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