The effects of Coca leaves Photo

Photographer’s Note

I met this man on a bus from Iruya to Humahuaca. He spent the whole bumpy journey turned around and talking to me, while chewing coca leaves. As a result, his breath was unbearable and his lips had turned brown.

I used a very basic compact film Olympus to take the photo. I then scanned it and cropped part of the dark top and the right, where part of the bus seat showed.

I welcome your comments - thanks!

berseph, AdrianW has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

AdrianW (2243) 2006-11-21 17:07

Interesting shot Valentina! I must admit I didn't know that coca leaves could turn your lips brown, so I guess that's another reason not to try them ;)

It's hard for me to critique this one, as I know you were using a compact, so you didn't have much choice on the settings... So I'll critique the main point that's frustrating me at the moment, the relatively high JPEG compression you've posted it with - you can use 200kb, but you've only actually used 63kb - which means that although I could improve this one quite dramatically I think, I can't do it on this version...

[Update: Thankyou for uploading a less compressed version - I've posted a Workshop here]

The two issues I have with your camera are the harsh flash, and the focus (which appears to be on the background) - both are correctable in Photoshop to an extent, but not after heavy compression as well. You can reduce the harshness of flash by using Shadows/Highlights to even the brightness levels out - or even by diffusing the flash at the time of exposure with a bit of tissue paper. With the focus issue we could use selective sharpening to get his face to roughly similar levels of sharpness to the background too.

I think your B&W version reduces the harshness of the flash, but unfortunately it also makes the removes the brownness of his lips - the very thing that makes this photo unique from my perspective...

Anyway, a very interesting shot of daily life :)