Stone Town, Zanzibar

Zanzibar.  It’s perhaps the most exotic sounding place I’ve been to.  Baghdad might compete for that honor, but I didn’t have the freedom of movement there to add to the mystery of the name, and its recent history leaves much to be desired.  I guess Zimbabwe falls into that category too given I went camping in the wild while there and had an elephant walk thorough my camp during dinner, hippos wandering around my tent at night and hyenas destroying our neighbor’s cooler. But I went to Stone Town, Zanzibar with the express purpose of photographing and despite spending only one night there, it was a success.  So much so, I’ve started the process of building a portfolio of the trip.

Thinking about making a portfolio of printed photographs is never an easy task.  Folks say somewhere between 10 - 15 images are what you want.  But not just any images will do, they have to work together as a whole.  Since I’ve only done a couple of portfolios of work, and none in the past 30 years, it’s a start from scratch sort of thing.

I’ve pulled up my 2012 Capture One catalog from when the images were taken and started reviewing the images, looking for portfolio prospects.  It dawned on me that all of the effort I’d previously put into developing these images has largely been lost.  I’d developed them in Lightroom and, other than the large-file .jpgs I exported into Capture One (which are in another catalog), the raw images were just that - raw with no development.  Never one to pass up the opportunity to re-develop an image (and to brush up on my Capture One skills), I decided I’d go through and select images that I thought might make the cut, and then develop them one at a time.  

I went through my images from the two days and flagged any image that I thought contributed to my experiences there.  I tried to be broad in my selection, knowing that I was going to have to impose some editing constraints later to cull the total number.  For now I decided it may be better to see if some self-identifying factor comes from the images themselves as I work through the selection process.  One thing that quickly became apparent was that I should exclude any images (and some of them are nice) taken from the boat trip there and back, or during a short tour I took of a spice plantation outside of Stone Town before leaving the island (at least one lovely image there).  All of the portfolio images will have been taken in Stone Town.  

After going through an initial cull, it was time for a change of pace and I decided to develop several of the images I’m sure will make it into the portfolio.  Well, at least they are in good contention for a slot.  

My favorite images from the trip were the ones taken on Sunday morning, so I decided to work on a couple of those.  We had arrived around noon on Saturday, and on Sunday I got up early and started wandering the streets with my Fujifilm x100, fixed-lens camera.  It was quiet initially, but Stone Town eventually came to life.  All I really did was wander through the streets with no real destination, almost like a rat in a maze that had no outlet.

To borrow a concept cited by a lot of photographers, sometimes when you find an interesting location, you should understand that it’s a stage, and then wait for a performance to happen in front of you.  There are a lot of stages in Stone Town.  This one was not really intended to be a stage - to me it was a landscape with this incredible red door off in the distance.

After making a couple of images, I heard the put-put of a scooter echoing off the walls and it seemed to be approaching.  So, I positioned myself and waited to see if it was, indeed, coming my way, trying to maintain my framing.  When it suddenly appeared it startled me even though I was waiting for it. I pressed the shutter and stepped aside as it passed by.  I guess I need to practice my street photography technique because I obviously moved as I was taking the photograph - it’s much less sharp than the other one.

But photographs are not all about sharpness and although the two are similar, they’re also very different.  So I’m not sure whether I’ll be keeping both in the portfolio.

As I wandered the streets I came across this very interesting chalk board that had football scores posted on it.  The neighborhood score board so to speak.  At the time, the European Cup was playing, and I’d even photographed some guys in a small courtyard watching a match on a tv turned around in a window (I watched as well), so the scoreboard and that image tell a story of the place.

I’d photographed the wall, and then stood back a bit and waited.  A fellow came walking by and I took an image of him, but given the early morning light and the slow shutter speed I was using he came out a bit blurred.  I waited a bit more, but nothing. I finally gave up and started walking down an alley that’s behind me in the image below.  This guy came riding past at a brisk pace.  When I heard the bike breaks squeal and then silence, I realize he’d stopped to check out the scores.  So I turned around and half-ran until I was positioned for the photograph below.

I managed to get only one shot of him before he started pedaling again.

I really like the composition of this image.  While the person is in the center of the image and is what initially attracts the eye (because psychologically we’re drawn to faces and to people in a photograph), the lines in the image draw the eye to the left a bit - to what the bike rider is focused on - the scoreboard.  It’s a simple image, but one of the few images I’ve made that I think tells a story.  For that reason, it will definitely go into the portfolio.  

That’s it for now.  A couple of images from a portfolio I’ve thought about for quite a few years.  I can’t wait to finish up the collection and start printing it.