Stoneman Readies a photo by Mauricio Alas.

A few months ago, I had a surgery looming and was looking at going to have to stay put for a few weeks. Even though the procedure was far from lethal (that I was told of) it is always a pain when you have your freedom of mobility denied. As I was going to stay cooped in my apartment for at least a week, possible three.

So I intended on going for one last stroll with camera in hand to see if there was anything that caught my eye. Of course, there always something, however in this case, as I walked by a ravine, I decided to try something different. To actually create an item to take a photo of. As most photographers tend to be reactive rather than active in our environments, since if we were the center of attention, than how could be taking photos of it?

So, I searched for a few rocks and remembering those famous Inuit Inuksuk’s we have all seen used in the Artic, I decided to build my own. In the end, it turned up looking more of Inunnguaq (human form cairn) than I expected. Unfortunately I was limited by the rocks I could find and the wind which made it %##$@@ hard to do a legged Inunnguaq (trust me, I tried and tried…) so I had to settle for this little guy.

I couldn’t not help noticing I had built this guy near the ledge of a stone wall which for some reason gave me the dramatic impression that either he was looking down, or worse that he was about to jump! Going with that, I decided not to blur the background completely, as if to give it a sense of depth and distance. That way to further emphasize the distance to the bottom. A full blurred bokeh would have denied that perspective. The colour scheme is based on the way the light was that day, cold, cloudy and murky.

Then, I raised my Nikon and as such the ‘Stoneman Readies’ came to be. Photo taken using a a Nikon D700 with 50mm an a filter.