Snapshots from Cuba

On Friday I returned from a 12 day photography trip to Cuba to capture images of a country on the brink of change.. Having never used a Sony Camera before for Photography I left my Canon 5D Mk III at home and picked up the Sony A7s II.

One issue I had was the fact I own no Sony glass! Therefore I had to use a Metabones adapter and took my Canon lenses with me, I decided to take my Canon 50mm f/1.2, 70-200 f/2.8L and 24-70 f/2.8L. This meant that I was unable to use autofocus, perhaps not a bad thing, like many I can rely too heavily on autofocus, and enjoyed working on my manual focus ‘skills’ (or lack of)

What I mainly find in my photographs is that I pay more attention to small ‘details’ rather than capturing a whole scene, in quite a lot of my photo’s you wont even be able to tell that they’re taken in Cuba! I find ‘Street Photography’ very difficult, I find framing is something I really focus on, and with street photography I am often frustrated that perhaps there is some small detail in the photo that I do not like.

Someone on the trip had brought an A7r II with them complete with a selection of Sony lenses, they were kind enough to lend me their 16-35mm one day, these lenses really compliment the camera, makes it so much more lightweight, and using manual focus is extremely simple when using the viewfinder.. However when I look back at the photo’s I took, I don’t know what it is, I just prefer all the ones taken with my Canon lenses, infact not one photo in this post was taken with the Zeiss lenses.

I took a few portraits on a Leica M240 with a 50mm lens also whilst in a school uniform factory, for this I shot in black and white, the factory was surrounded by colour fabrics but I wanted to capture something ‘timeless’ as we were in a large open plan factory resembling a wooden barn when women were using very old machines…

Anyway here’s some of what I saw on my trip. Enjoy!

Shot captured from the back seat of a Chevrolet taxi in Havana

Above – details of the taxi we drove around Havana in

Above are images captured at the Arts college in Havana. In the picture directly above are bricks transported to Cuba from Germany after WW2 which are still used by students in the art department for pressing plates.

Above are images captured on the streets of Havana. Directly above is a crop of the photo before that

We visited a boxing club in Havana, it was ‘rugged’ shall we say and open air, I love the way this camera captures light and the ability to see textural differences. The way the light pours in on the boxing ring I find just beautiful. In the image of the boxer training I was focusing on the grain of the punching bag.

Details from Trains at a disused railway in ‘Australia’, Cuba

The above four portraits were captured on the Leica M240 at a School Uniform Factory in Vinalis

If I went to Cuba and had only managed to capture the above three images then I would have been satisfied. I love the natural light coming in through the window and the brown tones.

Anyway that’s enough from me!

I have some 4K video footage that I captured at the boxing gym of a fighter training so that will be up next week – stay tuned.

All images were graded in Adobe lightroom