More Mindaugas

Welcome to the Lithuanian spa resort of Druskininkai, ironically the first destination of my first abandoned Borders project. I’m sitting in my hotel, in a ridiculously posh suite complete with two flat screen televisions and all the trimmings on a two-night work trip re-writing a lacklustre guide to the town for my current employers. Despite the fact that work has once again gone into overdrive I do at least have the evening off, leaving me some time to update here. Following on from my last post, I’d arranged to meet the blind ceramic artist Mindaugas Rutkauskas in his workshop this Tuesday. Like a twit I went out on Monday night and drank too much badly looked-after Guinness, leaving me with an already overstretched workload plus a photographic assignment on top of a shitty hangover. I dropped by Mindaugas’ place on the way to the office to see if I could arrange another day to photograph him, but ended up taking a few pictures anyway, of which you can see a few edited samples here. I’d decided to shoot at 800ASA due to the lack of light, which have me just enough to work with if I kept to a wide lens with the aperture wide open. After deciding the colour was too good to lose and do this work in black and white I sat down this afternoon and enhanced the pictures in Lightroom. I’m still not sure whether I’ve got the right look, but I like them all the same. Having realised that even if I could find a Pentax-dedicated flashgun in Lithuania (I couldn’t), Mindaugas’ workshop has no light surfaces anyway, so I found myself forced to work using available light anyway, which I must say I do prefer. Mindaugas has a window that would’ve allowed a little more light in, but I liked the look of it when it was closed so relied only on one striplight and two angle-poise lamps. I found him hard at work making these little musical animals, which are essentially whistles and that he was adding glaze to. After 20 minutes or so I had to dash but have agreed to do one more shoot with him before I leave for the UK next Wednesday. I’m now in touch with one of the main people in the Lithuanian Karaite community, who replied to my email in a fairly negative way. I’m sure I can win them around (more on the subject later), but have now got another subject if I need it. Comments and suggestions always welcome.