How I responded to the street scenes in Burano Italy was mostly due to how I felt about the colours and the luminances of the light the afternoon I went for a 2 hour shoot.
Colour is an emotion. Contrast is also an emotion. How the light interplays with our subjects can shape how we explore our subjects and interact with them during a shoot.
I know if I went back to Burano today, to walk the same streets, in the same order, I could not reproduce what I shot above in the same way. The light would be different, and my eye would be attracted to different things.
Similarly, I know if I tried to reproduce the images I shot recently in Sao Luis, Brazil, they would not be the same. The day I shot the images above was a rainy day. The walls were dark with dampness. Earthy. Less vibrant. Daylight colour temperature. I think Sao Luis like’s to be this way. It’s sitting in its humidity slowly collapsing into the earth that supports it.
I often like to think about each of my shoots as a performance. Each new location I go to, has a natural time to be walked through. There is a finite duration for me to wander around and play with what’s there. It is also dependent on when I arrive there as well, and I’m always wary of going to a location too early in the afternoon, because I may have walked through it all, and explored it before the light I love has arrived. I know in my heart that I cannot repeat the performance of walking through the same streets, and of capturing the same images again in better light. It just doesn’t work that way.
Shooting is definitely a performance. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. It has a final outcome.
And like all performances, what we encounter as we travel through a landscape or a city is never repeatable in the exact same way. Variances of light, variances of colour, also our own internal moods shape how the performance unfolds. And that is just fine. That’s what I love about it all.
I enjoy thinking that each portfolio I create, is a little play of sorts. A document of my time. A unique performance.
As it is for everyone with a camera.