I was working on my travel guides for Peru the other day and while going through my photos I realized that I had a lot of really cool images that just need to edited a little bit. On of my favourite photos I came across was this image of a group I was with at the time travelling on a reed boat in the Uros Islands of Lake Titicaca.
I’ll be one to admit that my knowledge of the lake, before studying in University, was thin. I knew that the lake was the highest navigable lake in the world, and most of all I know about how cool the name was. It was perhaps the highest destination on my list of cool place names I want to visit, which for the record Timbuktu, Mali is now atop of. What I didn’t know what that the lake has such a great history to it. It is the folklore capital of Peru/Bolivia and perhaps the folklore capital of the South America. The Uros Islands, where this image was taken, are home to the floating reed islands. The islands were created back during the Inca invasion of the region. The locals who didn’t want to assimilate took to the lake and hide among the reeds eventually adapting them into their homes. Nowadays, most of the residents of the reed islands are there for show and for tourists. Some people feel that a visit here can be a little bit tacky, but if you put away your “travelling snob” attitude you’ll realize that although tacky, this place is incredible.
How I Got this Shot
The advice I always seem to give is to get above, or below, eye level. When I’m photographing a place I always look for ways to change the eye level. In some cases it’s as simple as bringing the camera lower to the ground, in other cases it means finding something to climb. In this case, I found a watchtower made of reeds climbed to the top and got some cool perspectives. The post processing was simple as I wanted to make the people on the boat look miniature as if they were toys. I simply added a gradient blur to the top and bottom of the image and spiked the levels of contrast and saturation. In fact, this image was shot on my point and shoot camera. Believe me, with the proper post-processing you can do some very cool things, even with simple images.