When I travel with a photo workshop, most of my fellow photographers find out very quickly that I love to do portraits. Faces are my passion. On one workshop to Camagüey Cuba I found myself photographing a lot of shirtless men. In my defense, it’s pretty hot there and they bare their torsos as soon as the temps get north of 75. My criteria for shooting a portrait is the person must have what I call a ‘good face’, and of course, they must be willing to be photographed. The person does not necessarily need to beautiful or handsome in the classical sense; I just have to find the face interesting. I can’t describe what that quality is but I know it when I see it. I’ve been know to follow someone for blocks or even search them out several hours later to get a good portrait.
Because most of the people I was shooting in Camaguey were primarily men, I was being teased about it. One afternoon our group went to photograph at the local zoo. Cuba is a third world country with much poverty. This particular zoo was obviously underfunded and a very sad place indeed. There were very few animals and the ones that they had did not seem well cared for. If you’re a Cuban and have never been off the island this zoo may be a great place but it was not for us who were from first world countries. After about 45 minutes of trying to find something worthwhile to shoot, one of my male companions approached me and announced: “Hey! Patricia! FYI! There are a couple of young studs working behind the lion cages and they’re shirtless!” OK. OK. I’ll admit I hustled over there pretty quickly but mainly because it sounded like these workers might be the most interesting mammals in the zoo. And it was going to be easy to “chat them up” because I was fluent in Spanish.
And interesting mammals they were. Especially one. The two young men were working pretty hard digging with shovels. It was well over 75 degrees so there wasn’t a shirt in sight. As soon as I approached with my two cameras the posing started with one of the ‘braceros’. He was pretty subtle at first. But the more I clicking I did the more posing he did. It was like he was trying out for GQ. I actually started to laugh out loud because he was so obvious with his preening. I ended up with many usable shots but none that tells the story of his satisfaction of being the center of my attention better than the above shot. He certainly made my day. And I KNOW I made his.
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