Catching Up

Pinotepa Nacional, Oaxaca, is a run of the mill small Mexican city—which is to say that it’s pretty cool. There’s a cathedral, a vibrant market, lots of great street food, and a strong sense of community. I lived in Pinotepa for six months a few years ago while I was working on a project and absolutely fell in love with the place. I returned this past December to catch up with old friends and make content for my analog photography YouTube channel.

My First Weekend Back

I didn’t have a photography plan when I arrived in Pinotepa. You don’t need a plan in provincial Mexico around Christmas. There’s something going on almost everyday, and certainly every weekend. My first weekend back, friends told me there’d be a weekend of rodeo events related to a cattle conference the city was hosting.

Bull Riding

The first event, bull riding, was billed to start at 6 pm but my friends told me we’d meet at 7. They arrived around 8:30, an hour and a half after me. The bull riding didn’t end up starting until after 10. I was told they start so much later than advertised so that people buy more drinks and food.

bull riding

The crowd waiting for the bull riding event.

Bull riding

I back-focused about a foot here, but still like the photo.

Waiting

The long wait isn’t a problem, since bull riding is mostly just a pretext to socialize with friends and family anyhow. The atmosphere is great. People know each other and are constantly moving around to the arena to say hello and catch up.

Capturing the Scene

I tried to capture the scene a couple times by standing up and facing the crowd…the photos are fine but feel a bit contrived, I think. I find that I take my best photos from natural, non-removed positions. The photo below is a great example of this.

rodeo

Close Ups

Eventually, I reluctantly moved from the party in the stands down to the bull riding ring. The idea was to get some dramatic close-ups of the riders’ faces in the box, and then drag the shutter with flash to capture the motion of the high speed ride.

The Bull Rider

However, when I arrived at the ring, I found myself more interested in the commotion surrounding the riders. At any given moment, about a dozen kids and adult professionals work together to get the rider and the bull ready. They’re constantly climbing in, on, and around the box that holds the bull and the bull rider. It’s like a super dynamic, high-stakes jungle gym. You really get an idea of this in my YouTube video, but it’s much harder to photograph than it is to film.

Was A Full Weekend

As I mentioned, this was a full weekend of rodeo-style events, and the best was saved for last. The consensus best in this region of Mexico is the horse race: Two jockeys face off in a straight sprint, kind of like a drag race. These events always draw big crowds, possibly because they lend themselves to gambling.

Bull riding

Bull riding

Five Frames Left

I really wanted a photo that captured the speed of this event. I thought I could achieve this by dropping the shutter speed and panning with the horses, and possibly combining a flash to help freeze the motion in case my pan wasn’t on point. I’d gotten similar photos before on a digital camera, but I’d always taken many dozens of photos on high-burst mode to get it. This time around, I had just one roll of film with five frames left on it.

The Last Race

I decided it was best to wait for the last races when the sun would be low so that my weak on-camera flash would have a shot at freezing the motion lest my pan be off. Without reliable auto-focus, I manually focused to about the 10 feet where the horses would pass.

horse riding

The Powerful Movements

A note on the film stock: I wanted to shoot these events in black and white because I was familiar with the locations and knew the colors would distract from the powerful movements I was most interested in. The reasons I chose Kentmere 400 are pretty simple: It’s cheap and I’ve always had more success getting strong photos with it than I have with other more expensive films. I know that’s not a technical explanation, but I’m not a technical photographer.

 

Images ©Henry Craver