Author Archives: Andrew

After a long and slightly boring drive through Western Cuba, we’ve moved to Vinales, a wonderful valley between two ranges of low, rounded mountains known as “Los Organos”, because Spanish sailors thought the eroded limestone looked like church organs.

Vinales itself is a busy little town which pulls off the dual role of agricultural town and local tourist hub remarkably well. There are lots of people going about their business, some by tractor or horse and cart, and the centre of the town is mainly about tending to their needs, but with a few galleries, bars and tour offices to support the tourists. The people milling around the centre appear to be there either because they have business, or as a natural stop at the end of a busy day, not because they have nothing better to do, and it’s much more pleasant because of that.

Regarding the title: OK, I have bought a Che Guevara cap (naturally !), but this is more about photographic than sartorial style. One of our party, Ian, is consistently demonstrating a remarkable ability to get anyone to pose for him. Last night, I learned that he works with the homeless, so this is his professional skill showing through. My courage is still rather lacking by comparison, and even when I succeed I’m not sure the close-ups do justice to some people. Therefore I’ve reverted to my trick of trying to get candid portrait shots at a distance with a long lens. In an environment where people don’t mind being photographed and aren’t too self-conscious about the tourist cameras, it’s a way of getting some great shots with much more natural poses. Also who needs an f/1.4 lens to control depth of field, if you’re working with a telephoto at 20m!

The Hotel Los Jazzmines has a great location looking out over the Organos and the valley floor. The sunrise shoot today looks like being the simplest on record: open the window onto the balcony, click, go back to bed!

(Update, 7:07: while I battle with the slowest, most locked down PC on record, Vinales Valley is full of thick fog, visibility about 20m. No sunrise today!)

Lots of pictures of cars, so it’s difficult to choose a favourite at the moment. Here’s one which worked, showing the Capitolio (a copy of America’s Capitol) reflected in the bonnet of a nearby taxi of ancient vintage.

The foyer of the Hotel Sevilla has a number of black and white photographs of famous visitors in its 1930s heyday. There are the usual sports stars and film stars, but pride of place is given to three regulars who get an extended bio: Meier Lansky, Lucky Luciano and Al Capone. It’s good to see I’m in such exalted company. 🙂

Today we’re off to Vinales, a much more rural setting with promises of nice landscapes and charming villages. However, I don’t know how well telecommunications will work, so if this is my last post for a while please bear with me and I’ll catch up shortly.

Yesterday we went to visit the Necropolis Colon, Cuba’s largest cemetery (and effectively their national cemetery). It’s an interesting place, and I think I may have generated a couple of atmospheric shots, probably best in black and white.

While I was there, a young sexton came up to me, and insisted in trying to tell us all about the various graves, and his role there. This was despite my having no Spanish, and him having no English, but he was remarkably persistent, and through a combination of mime and available audio-visual aids, such as pictures of Che Guevara on their money, actually managed to impart some very interesting info. He then took us down into a crypt undergoing repair, and gave us a demonstration of how to tidy up the remains when a coffin collapses, complete with real props!

I have suggested to Lee that he tries to make this a regular feature of the tour, but I think he’s still in shock 😉

You know that there are people who do these sort of jobs, you just don’t often get to meet them. This was a very pleasant young man, who was determined to brighten up his day and hopefully earn a small tip by informing tourists on his specialist subject. Excellent.

I didn’t get his name, but guess what they’re showing at Havana’s main cinema. Yes, it’s “Shaun of the Dead”, the British comedy about zombies from a couple of years back. And that’s a good name for our friend at the Necropolis.

The end of my first full day in Cuba has left me feeling a little sad. You often hear the phrase “faded grandeur”, but never have I been anywhere where it’s so markedly and consistently appropriate as here. This is faded grandeur turned up to 11, if I may mix my epithets.

Central Havana is very photogenic. Everywhere you turn there’s an interesting old car, some once elegant architecture, or a fascinating face. But much of what makes such interesting images comes at a price: cars which are still providing transport long after their peers elsewhere were replaced, buildings crumbling and fading, people sitting outside said buildings because they have little else to do.

The fate of the cars is not that sad: many survive which would otherwise long ago have been scrapped, and for each being finally allowed to fade to oblivion there’s another which has obviously been lovingly maintained and has many years of active life left.

The buildings are much sadder. Colonial Havana was clearly once a very beautiful city, full of lusciously decorated buildings. These are now (in some cases) literally crumbling into the street. In other beautiful cities, such an architectural heritage is subject to concepts like “conservation” and “arrested development”, but Cuba appears to lack the right combination of money, will and skills to apply them. It’s common to see beautiful plasterwork patched with coarse cement, or faded facades draped in cables gradually losing their original form.

The people are very friendly, and not camera shy. Some actively seek to pose for the cameras, or ask where you’re from, often in the hope of a small donation but at other times without actively seeking such. But even those who are just living life in view of the street seem oblivious to the fact that we’re recording that life for our images, where in other places similar people would show obvious antipathy to being photographed. Maybe we’re seen as a natural extension of a community in which what happens on the street is public knowledge. I just hope we’re not turning Havana into one large fully-populated theme park.

Lee’s a hard task master. We didn’t really stop while there was light yesterday, and I’m writing this at 5 a.m., shortly before I have to get up and out for the pre-dawn shoot! Hopefully my biological clock will settle down soon, but please forgive a break in service when it does!

Well I’ve reached Cuba safe and sound, and I’ve decided to undertake an experiment, writing a travel blog, with daily observations and hopefully at least one decent photo. Whether or not this works depends on my self discipline, the availability of internet connectivity, and whether my photography is adequate, but I’m starting with the best intentions.

The trip was relatively uneventful, although marred by idiotic bureaucracy on the part of Virgin Atlantic, and some very odd behaviour by fellow passengers. Virgin first… They’ve decided on a weight limit of 6kg for hand luggage, and although apparently they’ve never enforced it previously, yesterday they were doing so with a vengeance. This might be fine for those off to a week in the sun with a magazine and a packet of sweets for the flight, but completely ridiculous for a destination where a large number of those going are serious photographers, with a couple of cameras, lenses and a laptop, none of which can go in the hold. However, they haven’t found any way of enforcing a limit on the contents of your pockets, so we were treated to a steady stream of people unpacking their carefully packed camera bags into bulging pockets, getting the little “OK for hand baggage” sticker, and then decanting their pockets back into their bags at the end of the check-in desk. The BA approach is much better: they limit the luggage size, but if you choose to fill it with metal and glass, and can still lift it yourself, that’s acceptable. Virgin are in danger of joining my own personal “no fly” list.

I started the flight in a nice forward window seat, with a quiet chap in the aisle, and an empty seat between us. This happy situation lasted about an hour, then a big bloke (about 6’3 and wider than I am) came up and asked the chap at the end “is that seat free?”. He then promptly just climbed over him (without waiting for him to get up) and plonked himself in the seat. There the new arrival got in the way of me eating my dinner, fiddled endlessly, cursing, with the entertainment system, and suddenly got up and just climbed over the chap at the end to get out. About 10 minutes later her returned and repeated the process. Then he left, and his wife had a go, on the same basis! Finally we flew into some turbulence when they were both out of the seat, and they obviously returned to whence they came, but I felt really sorry for the chap at the end. The phrase “norms of social intercourse” springs to mind…

Arriving in Cuba wasn’t as painful as some tales I’ve heard. The only minor bureaucratic problem was that the immigration people have got a new system to check your picture against the biometric version embedded in the passport, and this doesn’t work terribly well for people who wear glasses, or are very short, or very tall, or look very tired after a long flight 🙂

The thing that struck me most on the drive into Havana was how dark it was. I’m not talking about the fact the sun had gone down (that’s a process I’ve got the trick of by now), but how few buildings showed any light at all. In most Western countries we’ve got into a habit of lighting the outsides of our buildings, and letting light spill out from well-lit interiors. That’s just not the way here – even major government buildings in Havanna were dark at 7pm, with maybe a single strip light showing from the security guard’s office. It reminded me of my one trip behind the Iron Curtain before the wall came down. That said, if we’re serious about reducing carbon emissions maybe we need to take the Cuban lead.

The Hotel Sevilla is very nice: built by the Biltmore chain in the American colonial days, it’s full of spacious, airy rooms. My only complaint so far is that I can plug in my laptop, or the desk lamp, but not both, so I’m typing this by the light of one ~60W bulb in a room about 15′ cubed!

Photo of the day is from the bar last night. Very good entertainment, and an interesting example of the Canon 7D’s ability to take photographs in what is becoming known as “available darkness” 🙂 ISO 3200 is never going to be noise free (because of some boring quantum stuff, but that’s another post), but for this sort of subject it’s not bad.

That’s all for now. Future posts may be shorter – depending on how rapidly my biological clock aligns with Cuban time. Let me know what you think!

Andrew