My eyes and brain are still reeling from the visual cacophony that is Havana. The density of details to absorb here is perhaps higher than any place I have visited to date. There is the beautiful, the ugly, the astounding, the incomprehensible and the tragic. And you can encounter all of that in the span of a 5 minute walk. Walking through Havana is a great workout for the brain as you are constantly trying to figure out what is going on around you, and as a photographer, what to focus on. In this first post, I start from above, getting an overview, before diving into the details.
As photographers, we often have "the shot" we want to get in our mind's eye before we get to a location. When we arrive, we discover we have so little control over so many factors. The only rational response is to be humbled by nature and to put aside expectations. I photographed Godafoss in Iceland in June of 2013 and there had been a lot of snow over the winter. It, of course, was all melting at this point and there were near-record amounts of water flowing over the falls, so they looked quite different from what I was expecting. The water level in the basin was so high that it was impossible to stand where needed to get "that shot". In such moments, a few deep breaths are always helpful in clearing our noggins of preconceived notions and allowing our eyes and our hearts to take over.