Pierre Bodilis
Huang Quan De.
Huang Quan De.
Huang Quan De. Lijiang river, Xingpingzhen. This Guy is 87 years old! I suppose he doesn’t fish that often now, but cormorant fishing is still a thing around there. The birds are domesticated, and serve as a fishing tool: a small rope is tight around their neck, that prevents them from swallowing fishes when they catch one.
As said on previous pic, finding this place was a big part of why I wanted to go to China. I’ve seen other pictures before of the same guy in more or less the same surroundings (it’s the illustration of the 20 yuan bank note). It is indeed really photogenic, and I guess all the other photographers before me have been through the same process.
I have mixed feelings about those photos, mostly because I paid the guy for this shooting session. This was organized by the hostel I slept at. Paying for a model was a first for me, so I didn’t really feel comfortable with it. Staging pictures is something I seldom do; I sometimes ask the person walking with me to be the human presence on my shot. I usually like taking pictures “on the go”. Also, in a way, it encourages turning an ancestral craftsmanship into some trick for tourists. But it gives the guy some revenue, and it’s not that different from going to see a spectacle or paying for a tour in a boat.
Anyway, I enjoyed finding “the place” just as much as shooting those pictures. I tried the best I could to bind with the fisherman; we had a laugh a couple of time. More specifically, I tried to “direct” him, to get something that seemed natural, even though he knows all too well the drill along with our expectations. All in all, it was an interesting experience, and just being there, bare foot in the river as the night was falling, surrounded by the mountains and the forest, was well worth the trip.
pierre.bodilis.fr/blog/?p=4830
Huang Quan De.
Huang Quan De.
Huang Quan De. Lijiang river, Xingpingzhen. This Guy is 87 years old! I suppose he doesn’t fish that often now, but cormorant fishing is still a thing around there. The birds are domesticated, and serve as a fishing tool: a small rope is tight around their neck, that prevents them from swallowing fishes when they catch one.
As said on previous pic, finding this place was a big part of why I wanted to go to China. I’ve seen other pictures before of the same guy in more or less the same surroundings (it’s the illustration of the 20 yuan bank note). It is indeed really photogenic, and I guess all the other photographers before me have been through the same process.
I have mixed feelings about those photos, mostly because I paid the guy for this shooting session. This was organized by the hostel I slept at. Paying for a model was a first for me, so I didn’t really feel comfortable with it. Staging pictures is something I seldom do; I sometimes ask the person walking with me to be the human presence on my shot. I usually like taking pictures “on the go”. Also, in a way, it encourages turning an ancestral craftsmanship into some trick for tourists. But it gives the guy some revenue, and it’s not that different from going to see a spectacle or paying for a tour in a boat.
Anyway, I enjoyed finding “the place” just as much as shooting those pictures. I tried the best I could to bind with the fisherman; we had a laugh a couple of time. More specifically, I tried to “direct” him, to get something that seemed natural, even though he knows all too well the drill along with our expectations. All in all, it was an interesting experience, and just being there, bare foot in the river as the night was falling, surrounded by the mountains and the forest, was well worth the trip.
pierre.bodilis.fr/blog/?p=4830