Carnival celebrations in Catholic countries is the final festivity before the commencement of the austere 40 days of Lent during which in earlier times Roman Catholics fasted, abstained from eating meat, and followed other ascetic practices. Carnival in Venice, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and the wild carnival in Rio de Janeiro are examples. In the Philippines, there is a festival called Ati-Atihan, and when I visited the island of Borocay in this island nation, I missed the celebration by 3 weeks. So, through the concierge at my hotel, I arranged to photograph these young boys dressed in shell costumes who had participated in the festival. My original thought was to use a jungle background, but given the nature of the costumes I decided the sea was the perfect environment. Even though the water was very shallow and there were no waves, I was very conscious about protecting my camera from even one drop of salt water. Salt water kills electronics immediately. I captured this with a medium format camera, the Mamiya 7 (6x7cm transparencies) and a 43mm lens (equivalent to about a 20mm wide angle in the full frame digital format). My settings were unrecorded, but they were probably 1/125, f/16, and I used Fujichrome Provia 100 slide film.
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