Through the Lens - Portrait

Captured in Pure Innocence -Photo by Brenna Dominick

"How carefree they can be. Scout had climbed from her crib, to fall asleep on her dresser beneath the warmth of the sunlight."

Fulani Boys
This was taken in 1998, while I was working as a high school teacher in Nigeria. I was in a motor park, trying to arrange an intercity taxi on an Eid festival weekend. Motor parks were always chaotic: walled parking lots where cars and minivans left for the local destinations. The eager drivers persuaded and sometimes pulled passengers to their vehicles. People selling anything a traveller might need were among the drivers, passengers, and cargo which sometimes included livestock. (Sitting on the plane near a crying baby is nothing compared to a guy with a goat on his lap in a minivan.)

As I hurried from one taxi to the next, I saw this group of teenage boys waiting for their taxi. They wore a combination of typical African and vintage, second-hand clothes. They all wore bell bottom pants. The fellow on the left had a lace shirt. The walking sticks were typical of the Fulani, nomadic herders from the southern edge of the Sahara. One aspect of their culture is that the young men decorate themselves with clothes, jewellery and make up to make themselves attractive to young women. The guy on the right is a fine example of this, with his sunglasses, necklace and dangly earrings.

When I got out my camera, the boys casually moved closer together to help me make this portrait of them before a soldier came over and shooed me away.
Photo by Jamie Hide
www.jamiehide.com

This photo is a rare sighting of a vampire in her native habitat mid feeding and under a dull yellow light. Luckily no people were actually bitten or harmed in any way in the capture of this photo. I made some of that up, but the photo itself is straight out of camera though with no retouching or photoshop used on it at all.

Photo by Matt Kuhn
www.MKuhnPhoto.com

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