In Burma today my group and I traveled to a very remote village seldom visited by tourists. The Chin ethnic group are known for women who traditionally have had their faces tattooed as a protection against enemy tribes kidnapping them. This 76-year old woman was tattooed when she was only 10. She tried to run away to escape the painful ritual, but her parents tied her to a tree to finish the 2-day procedure. The cuts in her face were done with a thorn, and she was swollen for two weeks. Notice even her eye lids have the tattoo markings. Fortunately, this is no longer practiced, and there are few women left who bear evidence of this brutal tradition. The beautiful lighting is simply diffused daylight. I asked her to sit in the shade of a house in the village, and by exposing for the face, the shadows in the background went black. My settings were 1/400, f/7.1, 2500 ISO, and I used a 100-400mm lens set to 220mm. In post-processing, all I did was add 'clarity' in Adobe Camera Raw.
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