10 - Viva Lewes

DANCING QUEEN
P H OTO OF TH E MONTH
For a few weeks now our ‘photos of the week’ column in the web magazine has been graced with pictures by
Xavi Buendía, who captures moments of Lewes life through an interesting �lter: that of his being an outsider,
looking in. Xavi is originally from Barcelona.
“I don’t focus on obvious, touristic subjects,” he says. “I like to focus on the everyday, which Lewes people might
not notice as they see it all the time.”
In this case, however, the subject is rather out of the ordinary: the annual Rotary-Club-organised carnival that
colourfully and noisily bustles its way through town every July.
“I took about eight pictures of this woman dancing on the truck,” he says. “Most of them were close-ups. This
was by far the best because you can see the Downs really clearly behind her and the crowd in the foreground
acts like a frame. I knew it would be a good photo as soon as I took it.”
“I did a little bit of work on Photoshop to improve it,” he continues. “I corrected the light, and made a circle
around her to make her sharp, while blurring the area beyond that to dramatize the depth of �eld.” Xavi uses a
Nikon D90 with an 18-105 lens, and employs a variety of methods on Photoshop to stylize his shots.
You can see more of Xavi’s work pretty much every week at www.vivalewes.com or on his �ickr site (google ‘xdb
people �ickr’).
Send your pictures to alex@vivalewes.com. We publish the best in our ‘photo of the week’ column in www.vivalewes.
com, and choose our favourite in this slot, which wins the photographer £20. Unless otherwise arranged we reserve
the right to use all pictures received in future Viva Magazines Ltd publications.
29