Juan Valdenebro
Truth is beauty
I just came home, back from the toughest metering / focusing situation I've been into... And it's so hot outside even by midnight! Everybody's sweating in the street...
Today was the main night (only saturday) in a near two-week street celebration here in Barcelona called “Fiestas de Gracia”. Gracia is a neighborhood in love with street parties, parades and carnivals... Today was the only correfoc (run-fire) night in one year: some dragons (bigger than human size) have fireworks on them, so as they run behind common people, there are lots of fire, sparks and wild explosions coming out of them... People love it and drink tons of cold beer in the strrets waiting for them full of fear... It happens for half an hour, and only in a few square blocks... Each of four dragons have a team of people working on them: one or more people are inside the dragon moving it and running real fast; there's one or two more people directing each dragon's route in relation with the previous / next one; and there are three or four more people in charge of placing the different fireworks on their 5-6 supports, starting them, and when they end after 30 seconds, retiring the burnt ones and installing new ones... So every dragon on fire and explosions run behind scared people every couple of minutes...
I had been there other previous years, but never tried to photograph them before... This was hard:
When the dragon is about to be started with fire, it's a dark street in the night, and metering at 3200 1.4 is around 1/8 of a second... Then a couple seconds after that the dragon starts throwing sparks and fire, starts to run, and metering goes to 1.4 1/1000, and two more seconds after that, with all the fire power it's 1/1000 f/11! All in a few seconds: 13 stops!... And the dragon moves a lot all the time: runs scaring people and loves to go against cameras! They were angry at me! He he he...
It was funny: I was real close, feeling the heat and sparks falling on me: my hair and hands got burnt several times! Nothing too serious, of course... I used my cameras as a shield to protect my eyes all the time... I had a RF with 40 1.4 and an AF SLR with 85 1.8... Soon I discovered it was impossible to focus with the RF because of the wild movement... Anyway I shot its roll at f/11 in AE... No way without AE! The AF 85 was great help because I could focus with or without strong fire, quickly moving (in AE too) the aperture ring from wide open to stopped down several stops depending on the amount of fireworks coming out...
I shot both TMZ rolls with similar shots, trying to get at least one single image where there's a nice dragon shape, and some wild sparks all around and a mood of movement... Another technical problem was that after a few seconds of fire every time, there was too much smoke all around as to get contrasty images, so there was little time to act...
Now to development... Of course this will be less than perfect because of the contrast and movement, but I'm happy after doing it: some out of control things are cool sometimes! I feel like coming from the war after thousands of explosions... It was like shooting against an invisible enemy... The strong lights made me blind every time! Everybody runs and shouts like crazy!
Cheers,
Juan
Today was the main night (only saturday) in a near two-week street celebration here in Barcelona called “Fiestas de Gracia”. Gracia is a neighborhood in love with street parties, parades and carnivals... Today was the only correfoc (run-fire) night in one year: some dragons (bigger than human size) have fireworks on them, so as they run behind common people, there are lots of fire, sparks and wild explosions coming out of them... People love it and drink tons of cold beer in the strrets waiting for them full of fear... It happens for half an hour, and only in a few square blocks... Each of four dragons have a team of people working on them: one or more people are inside the dragon moving it and running real fast; there's one or two more people directing each dragon's route in relation with the previous / next one; and there are three or four more people in charge of placing the different fireworks on their 5-6 supports, starting them, and when they end after 30 seconds, retiring the burnt ones and installing new ones... So every dragon on fire and explosions run behind scared people every couple of minutes...
I had been there other previous years, but never tried to photograph them before... This was hard:
When the dragon is about to be started with fire, it's a dark street in the night, and metering at 3200 1.4 is around 1/8 of a second... Then a couple seconds after that the dragon starts throwing sparks and fire, starts to run, and metering goes to 1.4 1/1000, and two more seconds after that, with all the fire power it's 1/1000 f/11! All in a few seconds: 13 stops!... And the dragon moves a lot all the time: runs scaring people and loves to go against cameras! They were angry at me! He he he...
It was funny: I was real close, feeling the heat and sparks falling on me: my hair and hands got burnt several times! Nothing too serious, of course... I used my cameras as a shield to protect my eyes all the time... I had a RF with 40 1.4 and an AF SLR with 85 1.8... Soon I discovered it was impossible to focus with the RF because of the wild movement... Anyway I shot its roll at f/11 in AE... No way without AE! The AF 85 was great help because I could focus with or without strong fire, quickly moving (in AE too) the aperture ring from wide open to stopped down several stops depending on the amount of fireworks coming out...
I shot both TMZ rolls with similar shots, trying to get at least one single image where there's a nice dragon shape, and some wild sparks all around and a mood of movement... Another technical problem was that after a few seconds of fire every time, there was too much smoke all around as to get contrasty images, so there was little time to act...
Now to development... Of course this will be less than perfect because of the contrast and movement, but I'm happy after doing it: some out of control things are cool sometimes! I feel like coming from the war after thousands of explosions... It was like shooting against an invisible enemy... The strong lights made me blind every time! Everybody runs and shouts like crazy!
Cheers,
Juan
