Sisters’ Meal Festival

The story behind the image

Canon 5D, 85mm f1.2 lens, 1/320th sec @ f2.2, ISO 160

…A lot of people have been asking me about this image, a cropped version of which appears on the masthead of this blog, so here’s the story of how it came about.   I shot this photograph in 2007 whilst on a 2 month tour of south west China.  It was taken on the last day of the yearly Sisters’ meal festival of the Miao people of Guizhou Province.   The Miao are a beautiful highland dwelling tribe with a strong tradition of silver jewellery making and embroidery and this festival is one chance for the women of the tribe to show off their fantastic traditional dress.   In particular,  it is a time for the young single ladies of the tribe to get pro-active and attract a suitable partner and as such, the four days of the festival involve a series of elaborate rituals and community dances specifically designed to encourage new relationships amongst the youth of the tribe, many of whom travel from outlying villages to take part in the gathering.

Much of Miao culture has evolved from the significance of rice in their daily lives and the Sisters’ Meal festival is no different. Throughout the festivities, young Miao men will give small parcels of multicoloured sticky rice to the ladies who they have their eyes on.  As a sign to their prospective partner, a woman will bury a pair of chopsticks inside the rice and give it back as a symbolic acceptance of their advances.   However, a single chopstick in the returned package denotes interest rather than full acceptance, while what every courting Miao male fears the most is receiving a chilli, which signifies a refusal.

If you are planning to visit this festival, my advice is to travel to Shidong in advance and stay there for a few days.  The festival happens at a number of  locations around the area but Shidong, with its beautiful location on the banks of a river, was the most authentic in my experience.  The majority of the handful of foreigners I met there had just come for the day and, in my opinion, missed some of the best aspects of the festival.  It is possible to find many enchanting pictures if you get up early and walk around the nearby villages visiting families in their homes as they prepare for the festival.  The Miao are a very friendly bunch and I was invited in to countless houses to share food and see the ladies getting ready.  Proud people like the Miao are a joy to photograph because they love to show off their colourful culture to visitors.

If you want to shoot a picture like this you will need a fast prime lens, preferable f1.8 or less.   If you don’t have any primes,  I would suggest you go out tomorrow and buy yourself a second hand 50mm f1.8.   It might just change your life.   They are incredibly cheap and will open up a whole new world of photographic opportunities that may have previously eluded you, especially in low light situations where you will be able to shoot in places you probably never dreamed possible with your f4.5-5.6 zoom lens.  Additionally,  using a fixed lens will train you to focus on the specific area around you at that lens’s particular focal length without being distracted by the barrage of potential opportunities that zoom lenses seem to offer the user.  Pick your focal length, then move around to find the images that fit that lens and forget everything else.   Remember that one of the best tools at your disposal with a fast lens is depth of field, so play around with it as much as possible by filling the frame with plenty of out of focus objects but don’t forget to use these points to lead the eye into the main focal point of the image which must be absolutely pin sharp,  in this case the lady’s eyes and gaze.

Another shot of the dance taken from the rooftop of the village hall

As you can see from this wide image, the full scene reveals the fantastic photographic opportunities available at that dance.  With so many beautiful women in amazing costumes there was plenty of time and opportunity to find a striking image.

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Interested in more stories behind the image? … Click HERE

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 3:30 pm. It is filed under Photography, Travel, View the complete Archive and tagged with Asia, BBC, BBC Earth, blogsherpa, China, dance, Guizhou Province, Human PLanet, jewellery, Miao tribe, silver jewellery, Sisters meal festival, Timothy Allen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.