There is a festival in the Philippines called Ati-atihan. I missed it by 3 weeks, so I asked the concierge of my hotel if he could arrange some models who had participated in the event. These young boys met me at the beach, and my original idea was to photograph them on the sand with tropical foliage as a background. But then I thought it would look great if they were posing in the shallow water with the ocean as a backdrop. This was especially appropriate given their costumes. I shot this in 2002 when I was still using film. As with all camera gear, being around (or standing in) salt water meant I had to be extremely cognizant of the danger to electronics from saltwater. Not a single drop of water could come in contact with the camera. I used a Mamiya 7 medium format film camera plus a 43mm wide angle lens, and the transparency film was Fujichrome Velvia 50. The settings were unrecorded, but they were probably 1/250 and f/8.
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