To Speak of the Usual

Another two days have passed since my last trip to the internet.

Another two days… with little to report.

One of my biggest hopes when i came to Cusco was that i would be able to do a lot more social photography—that i would be able to get close to the people, that i would be able to take pictures of what is important to them, that i would be able to describe daily life… and so far i am really struggling in this endeavor.

What i find instead is that the only time i seem to get pictures that i like very much is when i am getting out away from people and shooting landscapes while climbing things… which is really what i wanted this time in Cusco not to be about.

So… i have a few more social ideas to try that would be a little bit of a break from what i have tried to do in Cusco, and i have a few more mountains to try… hopefully a little bit of variety and a shift in vision will serve to get me better pictures.

Because i feel like my photography is really degenerating right now, and it would be best if that wasn’t the case.

i spent Wednesday morning by one of the waterfalls that i have found. It is in my last picture in this update. It was nice to have a few hours to sit outside, listen to a waterfall, do some reading and praying… and i found that as i sat by the waterfall it grew quieter and quieter and quieter.

“This is interesting”, i thought… “i guess the longer i sit out here the more i get used to the sound of the waterfall, so then i don’t notice it as much.”

After two hours of sitting by the waterfall, i gathered my belongings and started back, throwing a final glance toward the waterfall.

i was shocked to see that indeed it had slowed to a trickle. A few pathetic drips tumbled from rock to rock. It was hardly the inspiring force that i had come to two and a half hours earlier.

And this is the strangeness that is a heavily irrigated area… this creek seems as if it has been running for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. It is right between two mountain systems, and so is a very natural streambed. The rocks are smoothed by what can only be the passing of years and years of water…

And yet a half mile or so upstream there is an irrigation project… sometimes water gets diverted from the stream, and sometimes water is allowed to flow into the stream and in that way… the people here turn their waterfalls on and off.

But on Wednesday afternoon i went for a walk in hopes of maybe taking some pictures that weren’t too bad. i didn’t really succeed, but at least i tried.

This first picture is a prime example of degenerating photography… admittedly… in retrospect i probably would pick a different picture to use in this slot if i were to do it all over again (and which i obviously could do if i felt like spending the time to change it)… but i was forcing things a bit for this one… and should have probably aimed for a better point of view.

But his name is Julian. As i walked by his small field, he was digging up his latest crop of potatoes. It was still a little bit early… the light was mostly just harsh. i really could have used some clouds to break up the intensity of it, actually, but i worked with what i could. i climbed up onto the terrace that he was working on to take a few pictures. Here is one of them… probably not the best, probably not the worst… just kind of a middle-of-the-road shot from his potato harvest.



i can’t say that i haven’t taken many pictures since my last update—i’ve probably taken around 200—but i can say that i haven’t taken any that i like. So… one thing i’ve learned is that as a photographer, if you can’t please yourself, you should at least try to please the crowd. And i have also found that a cheap and easy way to please the crowd is with really cute kid pictures. So… there’s not a lot to it, there’s not much of a story to go with it… but here are some really cute kids. Not a fantastic picture, but some really, really, really cute kids.



And finally… i woke up on Thursday morning and headed back to my waterfall with a tripod and the shade of morning to try to take some pictures of the waterfall. This is a tough waterfall to take pictures of, because it occurs at a bend in the stream with fairly steep walls on either side of the streambed. As a result, there is a very limited number of places from which i can take pictures of the waterfall… the most success that i have had has come from a rock just a few feet in front of the final cascade… but i lose the entire upper portion of the waterfall from there. Regardless… it’s not one of the better waterfall pictures i’ve ever taken, but at least you will be able to see a little bit of where i have been spending my time.



Hopefully i will have something better the next time i update… i think another mountain hike is in the plans for the next couple of days, and i also have an area that i am going to try to document… if i can do so in a way that is at least slightly meaningful. The potential is there, i’m just not sure that i am equal to the task.