The pictures I’m showing you today were taken during the fiesta of San Juan, which celebrates the summer solstice. The local superstition involves lighting lots of fires and jumping over them to purify yourself for the coming season. For an alien observer it looks like the children burn all their paper so that they don’t have anything left to write on in school. I also saw a couple of books in the fire and some guys were carrying a wooden door to one of the bigger fires as well. Very strange, all of that.
Although I had no light meter and had to rely on guessing the correct exposure for these pictures I managed to get it right in most of them. There was something not quite right with the development though. Since some of the pictures had some very funky “leaky highlights” – not sure what else to call it – I assume I was over-agitating again. I seem to be prone to doing that. In any case, considering that I couldn’t see the rangefinder patch of my Zorki at all in this light and was guesstimating the exposure I’m pretty happy that at least some of the pictures turned out alright.
All pictures taken with: Zorki 4K and Jupiter 12 35mm f/2.8.
Kentmere 400 EI 1600 developed in Tetenal Ultrafin 1:20, 36min.
© Lilly Schwartz 2014
I’m not sure there is wisdom in letting kids play with fire.
© Lilly Schwartz 2014
They were all doing it though.
© Lilly Schwartz 2014
Definitely more kids than adults doing the burning …
© Lilly Schwartz 2014
Well, I suppose it’s good survival training to know how to build a fire.
© Lilly Schwartz 2014
Fire in his eyes!
© Lilly Schwartz 2014
Apart from the smaller fires there was also a bigger one at the far end of zurriola beach. People were climbing over the fence all the time to throw stuff in the fire.
© Lilly Schwartz 2014
Getting the fire ready for some jumping action.
© Lilly Schwartz 2014
Ok … hard to guess what’s going on here. There is a kid jumping over the fire and another one is trying to get the fire going again with some air right behind.
© Lilly Schwartz 2014
Now, this is much more obvious. Although this clearly has a ton of shake it kind of adds to the style of the shot in my opinion. What do you think?
Of course kids have to play with fire!
Didn’t you do that in former days?
And look at them – they’re fascinated!
Look at the expressions you catched in the second shot!
Fascination with fire is probably a primeval hangover, for this is where man climbed out of the bestial state he was in prior to the discovery of fire.
“it’s good survival training to know how to build a fire.”
‘To build a fire’…the quintessential Jack London short story.
Adding a link, just in case 🙂
http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/jlondon/bl-jlon-fire.htm
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