Moved!

This blog has moved to www.francisco-guerrrero.tumblr.com

Follow the new project:  100 days , 100 photos with the Fuji x100.

Positive Split

Javy Olives, Triathlete. Manila, Philippines

My cousin-in-law and family superman Javy Olives is in Malaysia this week competing in his first Ironman.   A few weeks ago he was nice enough to give me some of his valuable training time to shoot some images for my portfolio (which you can see on www.francisco-guerrero.com  in the sport section).   Its always a pleasure to be around athletes and even more fun shooting them.   To read more about Javy’s journey visit his blog  www.positivesplit.blogspot.com/

The Poet

James Nave, Poet. Manila, Philippines

You can find hands close to home, no need to get on a flight and go somewhere exotic.  This time the exotic came to me in the form of James Nave.   He was visiting us in Manila over the Christmas holidays and we shared a very interesting car ride to the beach for new years.  He was the one who, maybe unknowingly, pushed me over and got me thinking about writing this blog.   And as these things go I asked him if I could photograph his hands.   We sat in my house, near a window and he picked up the notebook that never leaves his side.   We just wanted a nice page with his writing, on the first try he opened the notebook and as luck with have it there was a poem about hands.

Thanks James:   http://www.imaginativestorm.com/

Cecile Licad, Concert Pianist

Cecile Licad, concert pianist photographed at the Sofitel Manila

at the beach house

Junie Rodriguez. Designer. Beach House, Batangas, Philippines.

This is another image I shot before the hands project really took shape. It is part of a story I shot for Town and Country on Junie’s fantastic beach house, Ginger Hill.   Our crew had just arrived at the house after a 3 hour drive and Junie was waiting for us with a fantastic lunch spread.  I barely had enough time to shoot the food and deco before we all tucked into it.

One of the best things about working in this business is when you find people you love working with.  Manny Chavez, the Creative Director at Town and Country Philippines always has a great eye for detail shots that add to the main story.  This image, though not an interior shot, made it into the final layout.  Thanks Manny!

And so the blog starts

This blog has grown out of a series of photographs I have been taking over the past few years, hands. Most of my work is travel based which involves wide landscapes, interiors and portraits. Throughout these travel assignments I have found that photographing a well chosen pair of hands, with a local element, can speak volumes of a place and a people.

I’m not the first, nor will I be the last. But I still wanted to throw in my two cents.

And so I kick off this blog with a photograph taken in Mauritius last year on assignment for Conde Nast Traveler. I was lucky enough to catch the Hindu Festival of Light, Diwali. After a long week exploring the island, shooting luxury hotels, beaches and portraits my driver told me that he knew a family who lived near the hotel I was staying at. In the late afternoon a wonderful family took me into their home and quickly put me to work filling clay oil lamps which they were using to decorate their house and front yard.

One of their daughters was making a rangoli on the path leading to the main door. Rangoli is a patterned drawing typically made of rice mixed with colored powder and is used to welcome in the Goddess Laxmi.

And so with much giggling she held out her multicolored hand for me to photograph. This small image for me sums up the largely Hindu culture of Mauritius, the last of a long line of migrant workers and earlier slaves who were brought in by colonial powers as labor.

I had photographed a Hindu wedding at a sacred lake, Hindu temples and many portraits. But this is the shot that echoes the cultural crossroads of the island, a diaspora of Hindu culture floating in the Indian Ocean, closer to Africa than India.

A young girl decorates her front yard with a rangoli design during the Hindu Diwali Festival. Mauritius.

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