REVISITING PEOPLE AT WORK

Originally published February 9, 2009

The first tutorial, just under a fortnight ago, with British photographer Homer Sykes went well. A two hour session shared with three other students, giving us around half an hour each going through our first three people at work assignments. We were all free to contribute to the discussion and learn from each other’s mistakes and good points. The main gist of what came out concerned making sure all the elements in the picture contribute something to the shot. Composition is everything, and try getting it right first time round in the frame and avoid having to crop images in order to make them work. The background is as important as the foreground or main subject, as it’s what makes or breaks the picture. Without the luxury of switching lenses or using a zoom lens, you’ve got to really squeeze yourself into tight corners sometimes in order to get the framing right, or use your legs and move when you want to get closer to the subject. Try getting a higher or lower viewpoint, work those thigh muscles. Timing is equally important, catching that fleeting expression or movement, capturing the instantaneous moment when all the elements come together. Homer wasn’t bothered with whether a picture was sharp or not (good job about that, seeing the number of soft images we all had since we were using the long-dormant or lost skill of manual focusing), all he was interested in was the composition, the quality of light and the decisive moment.

I got good critical feedback on my photos of Freddie Fenech at the Association for Abandoned Animals and the silversmith Chris Aquilina. Unfortunately, time constraints meant we couldn’t go through the pictures of the actress Irene Christ, basically because there were too many pictures, the result of doing a six hour shoot with so many different evolving scenarios.
Assignment for the following fortnight was to go do three more people at work, trying to utilise what we’d learnt from the first three. The original restrictions of one fixed lens, a 35 or a 50, manual everything, black and white and 400 ISO remained in force.

My first shoot was at the Malta Mounted Police stables. I wanted to spend some time with a stable hand doing a behind the scenes piece, but learnt that it’s the police officers themselves to take care of all that. I met up with Sergeant Francis Seychell, a twenty-one year career officer one afternoon. He’s been in the mounted section for the past ten years. He quickly tagged on to what I was after picture-wise and he let me get on with it. I photographed him cleaning the stables, giving a horse its shower, cleaning hooves, grooming a horse…all the sort of things he’d do on a quiet afternoon at the stables. I did have the option to return early the next morning when they’d be lots more activity with several more officers around and horses being prepared to go out on patrols or ceremonial duties, but thought the pix when the place was relatively quiet might work better. The afternoon light was better too. Once again, because it was a long shoot with different things happening, I found myself shooting more than the 70 or so images we were expected to take.

The second shoot was with an immigrant named Jimmy from the Ivory Coast, at the Wasteserv Sant Antnin Recycling Plant. Jimmy arrived in Malta a few years ago, one of the thousands of African boat people who have ended up on our shores while crossing from Libya to Europe. Once the would-be immigrants are granted refugee or humanitarian status, they are allowed to work, though practically all end up in manual labour or other low-paying jobs. Jimmy works in a sorting room, where different recyclable materials are sorted. The day I was shooting Jimmy and his colleagues were sorting white from green plastic bottles, and detergent containers. I’d arrived at the Plant unsure of who I would be photographing – their Maltese shift leader asked them there and then if they’d mind being photographed. Jimmy, being the eldest and the only one who knew some English, was acting as a go-between, asking his colleagues if they wanted to be my main subject. When it became clear that we weren’t getting anywhere, as most of the migrants didn’t want their pictures taken because the police might see them (which is odd, they’re not working illegally – this is after all a government-owned plant), I told the foreman that Jimmy would make the perfect subject. Jimmy agreed, and proceeded to ignore the fact that I was there, which was exactly what I wanted in the first place. Catching the moment proved tricky – apart from having Jimmy as my main subject, I wanted plastic materials being flung into their pit in the foreground, the guy opposite side of the conveyor belt to lean forward to grab some bottles at the exact same time Jimmy did a similar movement, and I wanted Jimmy’s face to show up from beneath his baseball cap. Don’t think the elements ever all came together in a single shot, but all in all, results weren’t too bad.

The last shoot proved to be the most challenging in a sense because as I got underway I felt it wasn’t really coming together, though things did improve as we went along. I met up with Kurt Vassallo, a historical re-enactor with the National Heritage Trust (Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna) at the Upper Barrakka gardens Saluting Battery in Valletta. Kurt is one of the full-time re-enactors in Royal Malta Artillery uniform taking care of the battery and its artillery pieces, recreating scenes from the Victorian-era. He’s been doing the job for the past three years, running guided tours and giving talks on artillery and ammunition of the period, as well as being overall commander during the daily midday gun salute.

He was giving his talk in the shade of a canopy in bright sunlight when I caught up with him, a bit late on my part after getting held up on an earlier assignment. The picture possibilities seemed limited but they did improve once he moved out of the canopy and showed the different cannons to the assembled tourists. By the time it came to the midday gun salute, I knew I was getting more usable pictures and making it a relatively successful assignment.

Here’s to hoping Homer agrees :o)

MAPJD People at Work 3-6 - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi