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photo of the month
april 2004
'reluctance' by alan brown
On our annual pilgrimage to southern Spain, my wife and I visited a small village called La Nucia where a street market is held each Sunday morning. I had passed by the church on several occasions previously and noticed that there were never more than a handful of worshippers there at any time which is unusual for Spain being a mainly catholic country, I wondered, could this be the start of a general demise of worship on Sundays as has happened in the UK?
On this occasion there were several local children playing on the gravel surrounding the church and in my best pidgin Spanish (and sign language) I asked if they would mind moving to one side while I photographed the church, which they duly did. I wanted to depict the apparent decline in attendance at the church and, as I now have a small collection of slides of people in various situations, the man in the white suit with his hesitant stance seemed to fit what I wanted to portray. Would he walk by the church? Should he fulfil his religious duty and go inside? Or is the call of his local bar too strong?
The image is a composite of four separate slides. Using Photoshop, the church, the man and the cat were each cut out individually and positioned on the sky background, I ‘painted’ in the shadows and re-assembled the components to form one image. I then removed the colour to create the finished monochrome image.
Fuji Velvia and Sensia films. Nikon F3 and Ricoh GR1 with 24mm and 28mm W/A lenses.
