Kashgar, Western China 2003
Young Uyghur men at work baking a bagel like bread. They use a tandoor oven as do bakers in India and Central Asia. Culture oozes across borders affecting food, clothing, crafts and just about everything.
The baker uses a wire hook to retrieve the baked bread. So much better than having to place his head in the oven hundreds of times a day as the Uzbek bakers must. I didn’t see how he put the bread into the oven. I hope he has a tool for that operation, too.
To see the Uzbek baker, click here: http://www.rosemarysheel.com/archives/the-bakers-of-margilan
Hot from the Oven
The bread looks like a bagel but it is more like hardtack or what I think hardtack is. Hard as a rock, nearly. Genghis Khan and his hordes probably packed their saddle bags with it and probably it still tasted ‘fresh from the oven’ when they reached eastern Europe.
The baker wears a Mao cap. They add a thirties look to the clothing of the men in Kashgar. Men used to wear hats in America and so did women. John F. Kennedy didn’t wear a hat and the wearing of men’s hats declined after he became president. I don’t know why women stopped wearing them. I think it must have been because finding one that was flattering was just one more impossible task.
This is called an environmental portrait because the surroundings tell the story almost as much as the subject. Use a wide angle lens and get in close. You’ll have good depth of field with the wide angle, your challenge will be the extreme darks and lights. You will lose one or the other, so just let the shadows go black. In other words, underexpose. It’s never good to have washed out highlights.