Lamu, its doors and their carvers
I shot this photo for an article about Lamu, its doors and their carvers that is going to run in an internet magazine we’ll be launching in September (more info about the magazine as the launch approaches).
I was almost surprised seeing this photo after we had left the carvers’ workshop. The man in the photo, Omar, was the quieter of Alberto’s – who was writing the article – and my two interviewees. Where in their words the two men seemed rather pragmatic towards their craft, the photo seems to tell a different story, one of dedication and love towards the work.
The plank Omar is working on in the photo will be a part of an elaborate exterior door that are very typical to this Swahili coast. The finalised doors are quite precious pieces of workmanship costing around €1,000 apiece and taking up to two months to carve.
Lamu Kids & Overcoming some photographic challenges
This if my first post from Kenya and this trip to East Africa. I’ll be posting photos and thoughts fairly regularly so stay tuned!
In terms of photography here, getting used to two things took me a while. Firstly, the equatorial sun presents quite a challenge for good photography. Shining from directly above, the sun makes the light very harsh and quite dull for the most of the day. Exposing accurately, using fill flash and maybe most importantly, shooting in early mornings and just before the sunset have been my answers to the challenge.
The second thing requiring some time to get used to has been the general suspiciousness towards photography that especially many adults seem to have here. Doing good portrait photography requires always lots of social skills but that seems to be even more the case here. Photography here requires quite a lot of social effort; getting into situations where people aren’t that weary about cameras. That’s naturally also a good thing, providing an extra reason to find oneself in interesting social interactions. However, realising this took me a while and hence the visual topic of the first post: kids – they are always a lot more relaxed about having their photo taken…
These photos are shot on the lovely island of Lamu on the Northern coast of Kenya. I’ll be writing more about our time in Lamu in my future posts.
Note that by clicking the photos you can open them in a light box view, allowing to effortlessly view the photos in a larger size.
