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For a month I'd been hunting and stalking the streets of Ecuador for the
must-have street photograph of an Andean woman carrying home greens from the
morning market on her back. Ecuadorians are hard workers, particularly the
women, and I needed that street photograph to properly express that important
trait in my portfolio.
The first week in Quito I had a chance or two, but both times were spoiled when
the women with the greenery on their backs headed indoors too soon to capture
them in the wild in all their glory. Then during the second week (under the
erupting Tungurahua volcano at Banos) the market women carrying greenery kept
appearing every confounding time a battery wore down or every confounding time a
photo card filled up.
During the third week while photographing the streets of impoverished mountain
villages extremely high up in the Andes, the women carrying greenery were a
curse to me -- either appearing and disappearing too quickly to properly
capture, or appearing while I was cooped up in a bus, or mysteriously appearing
one time just as the camera decided to break down for the day (it giving me an
error message to look up in the instruction manual instead of a suitable Woman
Carrying Greenery on Her Back photograph).
The last week wasn't going any better in this regard and I was crushed when the
best Woman Carrying Greenery on Her Back opportunity I'd had all month slipped
by me on Sunday evening while changing cards on the streets of Otavalo. I was so
desperate to get that particular shot that I even moaned my frustrations aloud to my friends at the Hostel Dona Esther -- laying out the conspiracy
theory about the apparent curse and about my many failures over the past few
weeks. I only had two days left in Ecuador and I was leaving Otavalo on a bus
for Quito in an hour -- so I went out for one last try on Monday morning -- -- -- and low and behold -- -- -- I didn't just end up getting the best Woman-Carrying-Greenery-On-Her-Back photo of my Ecuador trip -- -- -- I got the best damned Woman-Carrying-Greenery-on-Her-Back-(in a RED! sash)-While-Wearing-Cool-Golden-Jewelry-and-Toting-an-Iconic-live-Chicken streetphoto I recon' I'll ever be
blessed to have the opportunity to get anywhere ...
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