Feature: San Miguel de Allende by Terry Vine
all photos © Terry Vine

Personally, I find that it is somewhat easier to create passionate imagery if you are passionate about your subject. The first time I traveled to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, I knew that this town was magical. From the people on the street to the historical buildings, from festivals and celebrations to the traditional cockfights, rodeos and bullfights - character everywhere you look. Finding passion here is not difficult.

A couple of years ago, a gallery I had recently met with offered to have an exhibit of my work, but they wanted new work, not the European body of images that I had been exhibiting. Of course, I said "No problem." The challenge was that I had to return from the trip with at least 24 great images. Shoot, edit, print, mat, frame and have it all ready to hang two weeks after our return. So when we arrived in San Miguel, we hit the ground running. It was bright, sunny, harsh light and I had no idea what we were going to shoot! I thought, "This could have been a huge mistake." As always though, there is nothing like a good deadline to get you motivated.

The people we met were so incredibly helpful. I wanted to photograph a matador. No problem. They made a couple of calls and gave me an address and said "Meet this guy at his home tomorrow afternoon at 4:00." He was great, not only a very willing subject, but he also told us more than we ever thought we'd want to know about bullfighting. The same thing happened with cockfighting, mariachis, and the wrestler, El Luchador.

I had an image in my mind of a long, dark braid of hair down a woman's back, but was having a hard time finding the right subject. Then one day I went to a small ranch to spend the day in a cooking class. And there, working in the field was the right woman. No braid, but besides that she was perfect. She was more than happy to change into a clean white gown, get her hair braided and have her photograph made. Out of that day came two of my favorite images from the series, Adela's Hands and Braided Hair.

Shooting on the street was a bit more challenging, places were expectedly crowded because of the festivals and street celebrations. But with my assistant chasing behind me, we always got to where we needed to be.

Since my initial visit to San Miguel de Allende, I have returned numerous times to continue working on this series. To date, this body of work has been shone in nearly twenty gallery exhibits across the country and prints from the series have been added to numerous museum collections in the United States and abroad. Also, I am in the process of talking with a publisher about the possibility of having this project published as a book.

I find that personal projects can be so rewarding -- refreshing, stimulating and at the same time, generating the kind of imagery that I like to use in my ads and promotions. Time, energy and money well spent, in my opinion.