Annual Highland Games in Prescott, AZ

The Highland Games are an annual tradition in Prescott, Arizona. Scottish pipe playing, whiskey tasting, clan colours and accoutrements, and of course games of “throwing things.”

I like being there as the eclectic and eccentric nature of the crowd allows for photographic experimentation.

As I was walking around, a photographer carrying a tripod and two cameras with lenses more expensive than my car looked at my 1970s mechanical camera hanging from my neck and said:

                          “Will you be able to catch any action with that lightbox?”

And as she smiled at her comment, I decided to capture what my trusty Nikon F and Illford 100 ASA film could freeze in time, rather than capturing the events per se.

So, I decided to focus on body postures among the throwers.

But first, I was attracted by the intricate tattoos among many of the athletes and wanted to report on one aspect of the body posture featuring the tattoos.  That is why I started this post with my favorite contextual photograph.

Ok, so my goal was to capture the different stages of upright weight throwers. The idea behind this competition is to stay under a giant H- frame and try to get the weight over the middle bar of the H. This bar is elevated during the competition till no one can get the weight over it.

It is like an Olympic high jump where the “jumper” is the weight thrown by the athlete.

For most athletes, the first posture seems to be

Which is followed by a movement to build momentum

Then the final swing 

And the vertical release of the weight

I also took a couple of photos of swirling horizontal throw movements of the hammer throw equivalent. The subjects were the exquisitely tattooed man and woman which I thing gives the highland games a historic and anachronistic context.

First the preparation

Then the rotation

… So, did I capture the games? No, but I tried to capture a dimension that indirectly addresses human body posture, movement and perhaps the spirit of these historic games.

 P.S/ … During the scanning of the printed photos I played with some of the scanning settings which gave the film shot a totally digital flavor. But also many of the shots now had their background blurred and the focused person in the forefront more actively.

So, I left these settings on during the scan function.

September 19, 2018

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2018