Later in Tzintzuntzan …

After some close calls with a great ball of fire in the church yards (La pelota p’urhépecha) it was time to make my way back to the graveyards and in search of the perfect shot … or at least a decent shot. I tried to make my way through one of the corridors of vendors to a stage with dancers, but I was having a hard time making single steps – and I knew once I got the to the stage I would be stuck in the back, so I turned around and made my way for the graves.

Now that it was dark, the thousands of lit candles among the marigolds on the graves was even more spectacular. I was visually stunned and I didn’t know where to begin. I wandered around hoping to channel some inspiration – and finally decided to just stop and experience it, forget about the pictures. I met an old man named Santiago and started talking with him and his wife where they were tending to her mother’s grave.

After a bit, Santiago walked me around the entire graveyard where we met more of his family — both dead and alive. We sat around a campfire and had hot fruit punch and “day of the dead” bread.

I had the perfect access for photographs, but I just never felt inspired to shoot – so I hardly raised my camera at all.

In part it felt intrusive to break the intimacy of the moment with a camera. It takes a lot of talent, patience, time, and luck to capture the emotion of a moment — but I find that it really takes a *lot* of shooting, in part to get the subjects so used to the camera that they stop noticing it and get back into the moment you originally wanted to shoot. This is something I often struggle with when shooting – how to maintain the moment once you bring the camera into it …

I’ve been working on that; though, for this situation, we’re only left with snapshots to help preserve the memory.