Piramide del Sol

I'm always looking for juxtapositions in my images. That is, elements in the composition that contrast with each other in interesting ways. In this case, I was getting ready to photograph Piramide del Sol (Pyramid of the Sun), which is located in Teotihuacan near Mexico City, when this woman sat down in front of me with her umbrella cocked to shade her from the sun. Generally speaking, I get a bit annoyed when someone does something like that, but then I have to remind myself she has as much right to the scene as I do and I try to work with what I've got. (As an aside, just because one has a camera doesn't mean they're in charge of crowd logistics. Some photographers have to be reminded of that.)

I quickly saw she had done me a favor. Instead of some straightforward, blah picture of the pyramid with the only saving element being the sky, I got a juxtaposition. In this case, that meant the angular relic from some 2,000 years ago contrasting with the curved shape of a modern umbrella. I didn't think of it at the time, but there's also the notion of an umbrella, used for protecting the woman from the sun, which was pretty hot that day, sitting in front of the Pyramid of the Sun. There's no great cosmic meaning in that, I admit, but it adds to the idea of a juxtaposition, I guess.

That's the thing about photography. Sometimes you don't always see a deeper meaning until after you look at the picture for a few years.

The settings for this were: Canon 5D, 16-35mm f/2.8 lens set to 26mm at f/22, 1/80 at ISO 400. I don't normally shoot with that small of an aperture, but I wanted to make sure I got both foreground and background in focus.