Several years ago when I travelled to the Philippines I went to Borocay Island. Every February they have a carnival called Ati-atihan that is based on the Catholic calendar and coincides with religious-based carnivals around the world such as Mardi Gras, carnival in Venice, carnival in Rio de Janeiro, etc. I was late, however, and I missed the event on Borocay. Not to be denied my pictures, I asked the concierge at my hotel if he could arrange a photo shoot with some of the participants. I suggested the beach as the location, and the next day I had three young boys in Neptune-like costumes with their bodies painted black. My first thought was to use tropical foliage as the background, but then it occurred to me that the trio would look really cool in the shallow part of the ocean. I was nervous about taking my camera equipment in a saltwater environment because it kills electronics immediately and without remorse, but I was ultra careful. I was standing in about 12 inches of water as I shot this. I took this with a medium format film camera before I went digital. I used a Mamiya 7 range finder camera and a 43mm lens (equivalent to about a 21mm lens in the full-frame digital format), and Fujichrome 100 transparency film captured the beautiful colors. I didn't record settings back then, but based on the light and how I work, they were probably 1/250 at f/11.
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