Further adventures in portraits

I found the local headquarters of the Greek Communist Party, a time-warp if ever there was one, complete with pictures of Lenin, hammers and sickles and all the rest. I arrived without an appointment and met a nice chain-smoking lady called Olga who told me that individual portraits were out of the question as they were all communists (this didn’t tally with the pictures of Vladimir Ilyich scattered around, but I wasn’t going to argue). We agreed that a group portrait would be the best idea. Of course the whole thing’s gone to a committee to decide. I’m not holding my breath.

Back when I was sourcing ideas for my person at work brief one of the places on my list was the exceedingly photogenic workshop of a carpenter not far from where I’m staying here in Volos. Today I walked past his place on the way somewhere else and with the clock ticking I made my second visit without an appointment of the day. The dim lighting is too good to miss here, along with the way the place looks and the way he looks. I shot a few test pictures at 1600ASA to get some ideas and will go back tomorrow morning at 9am to shoot more. The guy speaks bad English so it could be fun, plus he keeps a large Doberman, who tried to make love to me every five seconds. The things we do for our art.

There’s a tattoo and piercing place in Volos and on my way home I popped in, again without an appointment, as I was sure there must be somebody in there worth pointing a camera at. Marios does all the piercing and has agreed to be photographed on Thursday morning.

I’ve got to call the orchestra back in 40 minutes. The sun’s behind the clouds for once, which for me is wonderful for photographing people, although I’ve no idea how a group portrait will work in such lighting conditions. There’s still a chance of course that they may say no.