I often see people talking about "stealing" pictures and people being unhappy to be photographed.
Not where I live! Of course, not everyone wants me poking the camera at them but most are happy with it and many demand that their picture be taken. They are not seeking a fee or a print or whatever -- they just want the satisfaction of knowing their image exists somewhere.
On Saturday morning I went to the boat harbor a few minutes after sunrise. When the boat men saw me at the top of the cliff, they started waving and bouncing around and demanding I take their picture. So, as you do, I did:
Then I moved on to the market to photograph vendors and goods arriving and beginning the market day.
More people happy to be subjects:
These two girls at the market entrance were happy to have their picture taken. I showed them the result: "Nice!" they said, then posed together for another picture.
Four cheerful ladies arriving to begin a 12 hour day of serious market work. They have done the hard yacka of harvesting their cooking bananas, yams, and sweet potato yesterday, then were up before 5am to load the "half car" (=utility or light truck) for the journey over pretty rough roads to the market. Now, they just have to carry them into the market and set up shop. Theserious lady (second from right) is describing how she will titivate her bananas to make them look good. Lots of women are maket meri (market women) who buy at wholesale on the street from people such s this group arriving from villages with their produce. These ladies, however, prefer to sell their own produce (plus some added by neighbors in the village) at retail. if they have a surplus towards the end of the day, they might let it go at half price to the maket meri vendors.
Having carried in a huge bag of melons -- must have weighed 40kg -- this lady is now setting up her display and polishing them to present to the public. She was amused when I told her that in Australia, New Zealand, and such places, there are machines to polish the shiny red apples she has seen in the supermarket.
It being Saturday, school girls are busy. This girl stepped out of the minibus and went into business selling her ice blocks on the pavement right there. The ice blocks are cordial and water, frozen overnight in the home refrigerator. The standard price is 50 toea (= 20 cents US). Most people don't have a refrigerator; those at the bottom end of the fridge owning scale often help pay for it by making ice blocks in tubes as here or in plastic picnic cups, which they sell at markets or from home.
Home baked bread. This lady would have been up most of the night baking in a simple steel plate heated over a wood fire. K5 (5 kina) is something less than US$2. By my calculations, village bread making is a pretty marginal operation. The major store across the road from the market sells its bread for K5.50.
While I was photographing the baker, these three ladies set up opposite were very vocal with a lot of tok pilai (=banter) about smiling for the and the happy consequences of being on the internet or whatever, so I turned around to give them a bit of their own back. They are selling karimap (= cover it up) of cooked food -- modest meals. On the left is fish, banana, and karakap (a green vegetable which tastes like spinach only better!); the one in the middle is pumpkin (pumpkin tips used as a green vegetable), fish, and banana; the end ones are rice and sausage (saveloy) stew. All the food is "greased" with coconut. Prices for these meals: K3 (=$1 or so) for the first two, K1 (=40¢) for the last one.
More prepared food -- this lady selling coconut tapiok (cassava) made into a cake then sold in slices was happy to turn her back on a customer so I could take her picture complete with little helper!
This guy saw me taking the picture above so asked "One of me too!" then adopted his preferred pose.
Another school girl contributing to the family business, here selling handy bags made of rice bags. During the week, mum and older sisters make up the bags and staff the "stall". As it happens, I know the family, this girl is my daughter, Jenny's, school friend. This was a good business for the family for a some years, but now is getting tight as more and more people get into it. The bags cost K2 (=70¢) regardless of size.
An unusual vendor -- a man! The Tolai people -- the people who live in the Rabaul-Kokopo area -- are great eaters of greens and use dozens of varieties both cultivated and gathered wild. The "round cabbage" are grown in an area which is a bit elevated, maybe 300M or so. The puzzle for me is that this cabbage is cabbage and tastes just like cabbage (i.e. tasteless, pretty much) yet it is prized a bit here -- maybe its very blandness is a happy change from tastier local greens and other introductions (e.g. bok choi). Gawd -- give me karakap, aibika, and bok choi any day!
Pumpkin tips, spring onions (still to be broken down) a few tomatoes,and some ginger. I often buy from this lady (sitting) and we chat a bit about life, the meaning off, etc. I didn't buy the pumpkin tips she was selling on Saturday, I abhor the rotten things! The lady in the green cap came up and insisted in being part of the picture, striking her preferred pose. The young woman vendor is a maket meri -- she buys wholesale from producers as they arrive then breaks down her bulk buy into retail lots. Her pumpkin tips are selling for K1 (=35¢). She also grows a little at home; the tomatoes are probably from her own garden.
Aibika for sale. This is a Rabaul green vegetable special. The stalks can grow to a meter (3 feet) tall or so; this aibika is quite young. Aibika has a lively, peppery taste. You strip the leaves off the stalk for cooking, then simply stick the stalk into the ground and it grows! I kid you not. If it has grown tall, you cut the stalk into 30cm (1 foot) sections and stick them all into the ground and they all grow. Note another happy subject when she spotted the camera -- and the lady with the has positioned herself at the back!
Another vendor with junior helper who wanted to be more than an accessory to the veges!
In the staple foods shed. This is a cheat -- as I was taking a shot like this a few moments before, the subject greeted me. I lowered the camera and greeted a neighbor. So I took advantage of the situation and send her back for another walk down the (market) aisle, which she was only too happy to do! The vendors and other customers nearby (out of the picture) were falling about laughing at my cheek. She works in reception in a hotel and was doing a bit of shopping after finishing her late night to dawn shift.
These two ladies demanded amidst much laughter and tok pilai that I take their picture, then sat up as wooden as trees (which is find for trees). I said I not going to take their picture if that was how they were going to look and they fell about. Snap! LOL. The lady is selling bags of lime which is part of the buai (betel nut) mix of betel nut, daka (pepper), and lime. The people fro mthe Duke of York Islands off Kokopo make the lime by collecting broken coral fragments and burning it down. She is a maket meri (market woman); she buys bulk lime from the islanders (many of whom are also selling retail) then breaks it up and sells retail. These bags are K2 (=70¢).
The vendors at the market range from the serious, the maket meri (and occasional man) to the casual with a few spare fruit to sell and for whom going into the market is a kind of self-funding social outing -- you are sureto meet lots of friends and they will all stop for a chat. A teacher I know was at the market recently selling mangoes; "We had lots of mangoes from our big tree, so I just came in after school for a couple of hours to wind down a bit," she told me.
The bus fare for the person might be K2 each way (the bundle for sale is probably free, depending on how big it is), and there is a K2 vendors' fee.
All these picture were taken with the GX7 and the f2.8 12-35mm lens. ISO was 200 for most pictures, 400 for few. Some were on Vivid setting when they should have been, some were on Vivid setting when they should not have been, most were on Standard setting. In PP, I gave nearly all some light/shadow adjustment in PhotoLine and one or two I tweaked the white balance a bit.
I set the camera to 3:2 format because I find I compose faster and better in that format than in 4:3.
All pictures were with permission; either specifically sort, responding to requests to take a picture, or implicit in that I caught the eye of the subject beforehand and received acknowledgement. Further, I shared all the pictures -- showing them to the subjects (and friends, sticky beaks and whatnot) who enjoyed looking.
I am well known in the market, sometimes taking pictures, but mostly shopping or walking through to my local bus stop, either alone of accompanied by various members of my local family. I am there one way or another half-a-dozen times a week and being white, with a large, battered straw hat, and one of the big handy bags bulging with shopping over my shoulder, I am a bit unusual.
