chris plante: postcards from cuba

© Chris Plante

Please welcome my friend Chris Plante to the blog today. Chris is a fellow photographer located here in the Lower Mainland. We often go out photographing together and sometimes you might even find us hanging out at Broadway Camera or London Drugs drooling over all the gear we’d love to own.

Sabrina surprised me the other day and asked me to do a guest post for her “Chronicles”. I am totally flattered and humbled to be here. Since it’s the holiday season let’s keep it light and fun during this often stressful time of year. For those of you that don’t know, my wife and I recently had an 8-day trip to Havana, Cuba. I’ve told a few stories about the people I met and the images that I captured are posted on my blog. Here’s another one or two so pardon me if I ramble on too much.

The image above of the trumpet player was taken while strolling down the Malecon. We were constantly drawn to the Malecon, an ocean side road with a seawall where the waves crash when the winds pick up. Every day that we walked, we ended up on the Malecon and we weren’t the only ones. Twice we bumped into a Canadian lady who walked the Malecon every day too. It wasn’t only tourists enjoying the scenic road but many Cubans as well. During the day teenagers would be leaping off of the wall into the ocean. In the evenings, the adults would congregate on the sea wall to drink rum and socialize.

On one of our walks, we heard beautiful music coming from the opposite side of the Malecon. Up high on the third floor balcony of an old rustic building facing the ocean, there was a man playing the trumpet. He wasn’t just playing for himself otherwise he would’ve played inside his meager home. Like all artists, he wanted to share so we stopped for a bit and enjoyed the sounds over some traffic noise and I shot a few frames. Shooting him forced some decisions. If I framed the whole building then he was barely noticeable. So I got in a little tight which helped showcase him but didn’t quite show him in the full context of the environment. Oh well, can’t have it all.

Flash forward to us being home and having coffee with Sabrina. We met at “The Wired Monk” and talked about Cuba and reviewed my favourite images from an online gallery via her iPad. Sabrina picked up on something about the “Trumpet Player” image that I never thought about. You’ll notice that the trumpet player has laundry drying on the line behind him. You’ll also notice that you can’t see from his waist down and that made Sabrina wonder if he was playing without his shorts. We had a good chuckle about the possibility that he could have been playing naked from the waist down! I guess it just proves that different people see different things in an image.

Lastly, I must thank Sabrina for lending me her 10-20mm Sigma lens. It was VERY useful for the vintage architecture and cars in Havana. Since Sabrina mentioned she was glad that her Sigma could go to Havana when she couldn’t, an idea popped into my head. This idea gave me another subject to shoot while in Havana. Have you heard of the travelling gnome? That’s when somebody steals a garden gnome from a home and takes the little guy travelling around the world. The culprit takes many pictures of the gnome in various places around the world. After returning home, the culprits return the gnome along with all the pictures showing where the gnome has been. I had my own little gnome. His name is Siggy, short for Sigma.

Before you go view Siggy’s travels, I would like to wish everyone a joyous and safe Holiday Season with your family and friends.