It's still about the image

[pakodominguez]

Alfonso, is that a photo of some sort of festival?

Well, yes, sort of, but not exactly: It’s an Easter parade (or procession), more a (usually very solemn) religious ceremony or celebration than a festival (although I know the boundaries can get sometimes a little, or even quite, fuzzy). They are traditional and very common in Spain (and, I think, in all the Hispanic world: Pako, perhaps, could confirm).

Ah! Alfoso, you got me right in the proccess of editing photographs for a web page I'm about to publish now: information for a photographic safari I'm organizing, in Cuzco, next Easter!!!

I'll post more information about this trip as soon as the webapge is ready.
Regards

[bakubo]

Alfonso, David, Pako: Thanks for the info about the procession in Spain. I wonder if the origin of the dunce hat came from those pointed masked hats?

I took my first night-time flash photos of the Semaña Santa in Malaga when I was 15 in 1967, using a Pentax with 55mm f1.8 lens and High Speed Ektachrome (ISO 160! Ultra high speed!) and they came out pretty well because the white hoods reflected the flash brightly.

Yeah, hard to believe it wasn't so long ago that ASA 160 was high speed. Back in about 1974-75 I shot a few rolls of High Speed Ektachrome. Also, I shot a roll of GAF ASA 500 slide film about that time too. Very grainy film. I have some Christmas 1974 indoor photos of my mother and father, sisters, brother, cousins, grandparents, aunt, and uncle that I made with it. I scanned some of the slides a few years ago. It was an outdoor film so they all have a strong red cast since the light was mostly from incandescent bulbs, but after scanning I could correct the color somewhat. Darn, here I go again.

[David Kilpatrick]

Alfonso, David, Pako: Thanks for the info about the procession in Spain. I wonder if the origin of the dunce hat came from those pointed masked hats?

Unconnected, I think. The pointed dunce hat (marked with a D, and not just in cartoons) was placed on the head of the child (boy) who was bottom of the class in schools - I don't know the earliest date, but certainly predates Victorian schools and goes back to late mediaeval times. I think the captured sailors thought the Spanish penitent's hoods looked like dunce hats, though the words used in the Elizabethan/Jacobean accounts was fool. These accounts were, in any case, propaganda leaflets. When an adventurer or sailor returned from captivity abroad, they could quickly find a publisher who would help them with the writing side of it, and if the pamphlet said enough bad things about Spain or glorified the rewards of becoming a seaman/soldier, they might be awarded a Royal pension as well as benefiting from the sales. So whatever they thought, they would make it a bit sensational, just the same as any modern sell-your-story to the newspapers.

Duns, the town, is about 15 miles from here. The words dunce is supposed to mean a person from Duns, though it is hard to know why the town got this reputation. Duns Scotus, an eminent mediaeval academic and true European who left Scotland to study at universities on the continent, was a brilliant mind. I suspect the connection is false and was made later on. I know three excellent photographers from the town or nearby - Lawson Wood, now emigrated to the Cayman Islands to run underwater photography courses and a dive school; Laurie Campbell, a truly modest and painstaking wildlife photographer; and John Corbett, a competent wildlife shooter best known for a career doing the sound recordings of wildlife and birds for BBC natural history programs. None of 'em dunces!

David