All at sea

Kato Gatzea, Greece

One of the positive things about this course that I’m already starting to appreciate is that it makes me do things I don’t want to do. Rather than seek permission to do my first ‘At Work’ assignments on my mobile phone I thought it would be both fairer and more interesting to use my dSLR as instructed. Having been in Greece for just a week and knowing almost nobody my choice of subjects is limited, and rather than find the ‘right’ subject I thought I’d take whatever came along. In this case it was a chance conversation with the son of a friend who mentioned a friend of his who fishes early each morning off the coast a few kilometres west of where I’m staying.

At just after seven o’clock this morning in pitch darkness I clambered aboard a tiny traditional Greek fishing boat for a short trip off the coast to shoot a man called Savas as he hauled in his supposedly fish-filled net on board. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but I didn’t realise just how hard it was going to be. The good thing about this is that it really forced me to think not just about what I was doing at the time, but also in general about what on earth it is I’m doing on this course and what exactly it is I want to achieve.

Already up on the Elephant site, the pictures don’t quite speak for themselves, so I thought it would be useful to the viewer to write this explanatory blog entry. As you can see I shot about twice as many pictures as required, the reasons being because the first half were shot before the sun was up, and are pretty much useless, plus contrary to what I was told, Savas didn’t speak any English so I had no idea what he was going to do. These facts, coupled with the fact I was shooting on a small boat, a great deal of it I wasn’t allowed to get access to as it meant getting in Savas’ way, in constantly changing lighting conditions, and in the realisation that most of the session was going to involve my host pulling in his net looking like a Greek statue, meant I was forced to either abandon the idea of doing it or to rethink. I chose the latter and a great many of the shots were taken in an essay style.

Considering I was using a fairly alien camera with completely manual settings whilst trying not to fall in the sea, I think I did a fairly decent job. The event wasn’t helped by the fact that Savas caught about 10 fish, got thoroughly pissed off, and set me back on shore early as there was no chance of any great shots of him boxing up his catch etc. Looking at the data I also see that the 35mm equivalent lens setting was 30mm, not 35mm as I’d planned. All of these amusing mistakes I’m happy to share with anyone interested in knowing about them. I’m here to learn after all.

Tomorrow I’m off to meet representatives of Volos’ tiny remaining Jewish population to see if there are any interesting ways of shooting somebody ‘At Work’ there.

Oh, and the pictures I uploaded by ftp today are all showing on Elephant in the reverse order.