I thought it would be interesting or useful for some of my readers to hear the story behind one of my photos, so I decided to explain how the above image was made and what led up to it. It is one of my favorite images from a recent trip to Peru, where I shot a story, Legacy of War, about the decades-long internal conflict that saw approximately 70,000 lives lost. I traveled to Ayacucho, a city in the Andes, to investigate a tumultuous period in Peru’s history, which began in this town. After meeting and photographing many people directly affected by the violence of the 80’s and 90’s, I took a taxi into the hills above Ayacucho in order to make some photographs of the entire city – I needing something with more of a sense of place. I shot landscapes and wide shots of the city from above and I told our taxi driver in Spanish that I’d like to stop once or twice on the way back in order to chat with people in the fields and/or make photos. After a minute or two, I spotted two women sitting together in a beautiful pastoral scene. I told the driver to stop and I got out of the car with my girlfriend, Karlie, and we approached the women.

From across a large ditch, I yelled to them in Spanish, telling them that I am a journalist, I came from the U.S., I’m interested in the daily life of Ayacuchanos, and I want to chat with them and take their photo. They nodded as we climbed through the ditch and slipped and slid on the dry earth. Standing next to the ladies, the first thing that struck me was the size of their cheeks. Like chipmunks, they each had a giant wad of something stuffed into one cheek, and it took me a few seconds to realize that it must of course be coca leaves. As a Seattle photographer, this obviously isn’t something I get to see or photograph often. They smiled as I talked to them in Spanish and I noticed just a few teeth in those smiles. One woman was spinning yarn while we sat, and I’m not quite sure if it was llama or alpaca or neither. I listened to a few very thick and difficult Spanish words that the woman spoke to me, saying to me that she understood some Spanish but spoke only Quechua. We laughed as she asked me a few things in Quechua, to which I could only reply “no sé,” … “I don’t know” in Spanish.

I told them to just carry on as if I were not there, and then I walked behind them to capture the beautiful hills in the background behind them. The two cows in the left of the frame mirrored the two women spending the afternoon together, and the picture came out quite well. It felt calm and quiet, with just the right colors and tones. I wanted to shoot the image at f/1.4 to make the background blur significantly, but with the Canon 50mm lens that I have it can be a pain to keep the subject in focus. I snapped a few quick frames before saying goodbye, and only one of these frames was decently in focus. With a bit of luck, as usual, I was able to meet a couple of people in a really cool scene and make a photo out of it. Once I got home, I didn’t hardly do anything to the photo in Lightroom or Photoshop except perhaps bump the contrast and saturation up just a bit. Thanks a lot for looking and stay tuned for more.