Serendipity gets the better part of the credit for this shot. As one of the International Thriller Day participants, I was nowhere near my camera at the time. My friend Emily had set it on a nearby table and hit the shutter release to start a video recording. A month later, as I was looking through Africa photos, I saw that my camera had automatically created a screenshot of the clip. After a little playing with Lightroom, it turned out to be a pretty cool looking capture(albeit low-res), so I posted it with everything else. Go figure, out of a video with over 1000 frames, the one that my camera grabs for a screenshot makes it into TIME. The Lumix is smarter than I thought. Hope somebody's enjoying it...
The following day, I went with the two other American volunteers at La Casa Hogar to a festival in Quinua, about an hour away from Ayacucho. Because the three of us worked in the morning, we missed the re-enactment of the Battle of Ayacucho (a definitive battle between Peruvians and the Spanish in the fight for independence). Even for just two hours, we took in our share of some spectacular mountain views and old Spanish architechture. The golden daylight hours hit a short time before we were to leave, so I sprinted around with my camera, still riding the high of the news I had received the day before. The one thing I don't really like about the Lumix is that it doesn't have quite the throw necessary for those candid snapshots of people just living their lives. An old woman perched on a doorstep, traditionally dressed in a purple wool sweater and bombin hat, refused my request to take her photo. Regardless, it was a productive afternoon. One of the pueblo's main pedestrian walkways inclines steeply, requiring multiple flights of stairs. The slope is so great that I was able to catch some close-ups of the undulating edges of the spanish tile roofs along with a backdrop sky as big as any I had seen in Africa. Anxious to start looking back on the day, I threw the camera quickly into my bag, rejoined Mal and Emily, and headed past the artisanal market crowds for the buses to Ayacucho. As soon as we hopped into an empty one I slung my bag around and noticed the zipper open, the camera gone.
I was devastated and completely disappointed with myself for not being more aware. We didn't see another white person our entire time in Quinua, so I let my guard down thinking we were far away from the petty theft found in more touristed corners of the country. The bus ride home was a miserable attempt to make sense of what had just happened. More than anything I wanted to give the Casa Hogar some memorable photos, both for the kids and for web advertisement. That opportunity was immediately stripped from me by some opportunistic kid. Trying to remain positive, I reasoned the event into some cosmic trade-off I had previously made: choose between two months in Peru and no camera or a sedentary 2 months at home with it. Optimism was hard to come by as I slid down the mountainside with the rest of our over-capacity van, cold rainwater leaking through the window and onto my head.
That really sucks about the camera, Kevin, but congrats on your photo. Clearly, you are a talented man with many gifts. An eye for photography, a heart for helping, and always the skill of story telling.
ReplyDeletep.s. I can send you a disposable camera if you'd like!
You withouth your ubiquitous camera would be like Kobe breaking the index finger on his shooting hand...which just happened a couple days ago.
ReplyDeleteFollow his lead, play left handed.
I have no idea what that means.