Great pictures tell great stories. The picture above is unremarkable at best, but I believe that the story behind it deserves telling. Some moments do not simply lend themselves to repetition and they become lost in memory after they pass.
This was shot on a gusty, blustery Sunday afternoon that would see typhoon Gener ravage the northern part of the archipelago while still making its presence felt everywhere else in the country. The people in the image are harvesting shells, the kind that's usually boiled (often with vegetables) to make soup. They scoured the entire length of the beachfront for hours, wading in thigh-deep waters in that inclement weather. However, it wasn't until I passed some of them on my way home that I noticed that the plastic gallons that they used as containers were barely a third of the way full.
And it was at this moment that I decided to give this image its best chance to recount the story of these shell harvesters because I truly believe that awareness can be a powerful thing. I don't normally ask as much of an image in post as I have this particular picture, but my original capture was rather flat and undramatic. By post-processing purposefully, I pushed it to its limits to extract every detail in the tale that I begged it to narrate.
This is not a great picture, not by any stretch, and I would not normally share it, but it is an image that gave me both pause and perspective. And sometimes you have to save the picture, so it can tell its story.
The waters' texture looks so solid that this photo could be mistaken for a jagged plain... I looked hard enough and imagined it resembles a dessert and somehow a drizzle came to pass swiftly, leaving dimples on the sand. :D And the men seemingly are plowing into the ground, looking for something or maybe digging themselves free.
ReplyDeleteThat aside, I think the shells are called "boknay" the really small ones that we often use a safety pin or pin to pull out the meat from them. I might be mistaken for the name, because I realized there are so many names for seashells. Well, I fondly call them kinhason. It has a certain ring to it. Tehehee
Great shot. And filtering. :D
Thank you for the kind words.
ReplyDeletePart of the reason why I converted this picture to B&W was to emphasize the textures of the water. I saw how it made the water look like earth and this worked for me because it underlined the toil these people undertook to make a living. I love how you saw that as well.
This post is different from your usual post. One, you have revealed your tendency to empathize to other people even if they are not family or friends.
ReplyDeleteSecond, you have used post-processing to emphasize your message to the public.
A great post and soulful shot. :)
Thank you, P're. If I can evoke a response, emotional or otherwise, in one person then that will be more than enough for me.
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