It has been a challenging year for street photographers. Like many of them, I am sure, I loaded my cameras with film, prepared my bag to go out and find a human story, but could not find any humans in the streets.
For an entire year.
So, at some point the urge to take pictures took over my love for people’s behavior in the streets and I took pictures of chairs and trees on snowy days, coyotes, bobcats and .. of wild “pigs”! Well, these really are South American peccary but around here they are called pigs because of their resemblance to boar.
And for deviating from my decades old tradition of street photography, I received quite a few comments, oral or written. I recently responded to one of these here: https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2021/02/would-street-photographer-go-to.html.
… Things have not changed much after a year, so, a couple of evenings ago when my dog barked his specific bark announcing “the pigs are here!” I couldn’t resist taking my camera to the balcony and wait for them to show up below, in the backyard.
It was just a couple – an old “silver back” male with his smaller female companion. He came out to assess if all was ok and he noticed me on the balcony (although they do have weak vision.)
Then, he went to the back of the house where my hammock is under a few hundred year old Juniper tree.
I went out and found them cuddling under the tree next to my hammock! As seen in the first photo, he was at least three times larger than her, which is why she seems to be so relaxed in his company. I had time to click only once as he got up, snorted a few times and took his mate away (they do have excellent hearing!)
I knew they slept under the hammock on rainy nights, but had not seen him cuddle like that just after sunset. In fact I was amazed that the photos (I chose the best ones out of a few I took) came out well because I used my 1969 Nikon F with a Nikkor 135mm f3.5 lens from the same era. Here are camera and lens:
I shot at full aperture with a 1/30th second shutter speed.
The Juniper tree and my hammock gave me a chance to use my Soviet Salyut medium format camera with a super wide angle Ukrainian ARSAT lens a month or so ago. Here is that photo
and the link to the full blog about that photo and camera: https://liveingray.blogspot.com/2021/01/soviet-salyut-s-medium-format-camera.html
…So, the peccary would have had a great evening cuddling under the Juniper tree if I had not intruded.
But I think it was fun seeing them on “my street” and getting that sweet moment on film.
Now, I will wait to hear comments about my drifting away from street photography of people....
March 22, 2021
©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2021
