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Tyler MacDonald
Lely High School
Naples, Florida

Drive

Two things were evident from our first look at Tyler’s photos: he’s got talent, and he’s got access. “My family is always outdoors,” he says. “We have a camper, and we go all around Florida.” Couple that with picking up a camera when he was 11 and you get an archive of images that includes “just about every species of animal native to Florida.” Tyler sells prints of his images at art shows and through his website, and he’s received several awards for his work.

The Panasonic GF5 is an extremely compact camera with interchangeable lenses and a large image sensor (Micro Four Thirds format). The sensor offers 12 MP resolution and is able to record Full HD videos. It also allows taking images with high ISO speed settings of 6400 (additional hi-mode up to ISO 12,800).

In early February I went to Cuba for 10 days of photography. Long before I left I knew what I wanted to accomplish. I’d been to Cuba 10 years before, so I knew the basics of what I’d see and what I could expect. This time I narrowed down what I wanted to photograph. I wanted to shoot mostly in the old section of Havana and in the city of Trinidad. People would be my main subjects—people on the streets, in their homes, going about their lives. In Old Havana I wanted to work in the late afternoon and early evening; in Trinidad I wanted to capture people against colorful backgrounds. On this trip there wouldn’t be open country where I’d be shooting landscapes or people working in the fields; there’d be no wide-open spaces, no photos of tobacco fields or expanses of sugar cane.

Traveling in winter on the train from Dresden, Germany, the mostly overcast countryside zipped by as the train quickly moved along on its way to our destination in Prague, Czech Republic. Occasionally the sun peeked out from the clouds and lit up the houses and the industrial areas we traveled through. At first I thought my images might be impaired by a too slow shutter speed and the reflection in the train windows, but I quickly decided to use those problems to my advantage. The photos I ultimately made (and named “Views From the Train”) clearly indicate movement, low light, and reflections; qualities that mirror both the literal and metaphorical aspects of the country we traveled through.