Life on the river #1
During my recent trip to Madagascar, one of the highlights was a three day trip down the Tsiribihina River in a traditional pirogue as it’s probably one of the most relaxing ways of seeing Madagascar’s beautiful countryside. You usually get in the boat around 6-7 in the morning after packing all the tents and you get carried by the river with the help of the guide and his crew paddling from the back. All you’ve got to do (besides helping out with the paddling if you want to) is to sit back, relax, read, look at the nature around you and take photos.
Because these boats are really low in the water you always have a really cool perspective on what’s going on around you and during these three days I always had the camera in my hands as there was always something to photograph. I’ve decided to call this series of photos “Life on the river” and over the next few weeks I’ll post more from this wonderful part of Madagascar. This particular image is of our guide (the guy in the front), his two helpers and one of the helper’s kid brother who decided to come along for the ride. Bernice, our guide, who was also a great cook, really made the whole trip interesting with his stories. Although the stories were told in Malagasy, he had such an expressive way of describing things that it was impossible to not pay attention to him.
In terms of post-processing, this one was slightly more complicated than usual. Let me explain why… I shot two frames of this particular scene and the image below was the one I preferred. However, in this frame, the kid had his head slightly down and his eyes were closed, while in the other frame he was looking straight at the camera. So I decided to do a small transplant and replace his head, which was only possible because the two images were so similar to each other. You might say it’s a bit too much post-processing, but the fact that his eyes were closed in the frame I liked was really bugging me.
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