ENVIRONMENTAL LIFESTYLE PORTRAIT American Indian Woman

Celia Silva is an elder Kumiai Indian woman from San Jose de la Zorra tribal ejido in northern Mexico.

As a commercial portrait photographer for some 30 years -- this is one of my favorite portraits for the humble story and quiet dignity it tells of an elder indigenous woman posing for a photograph.

Celia lives in the one-room shack pictured below with no electricity, water or indoor toilet and makes what money she can by painstakingly hand-weaving traditional juncus basketry and other tribal ethnographic art mostly for sale across the US-Mexico border.

In her tribal region she and some of her family members are famous for their creative juncus artistry.

Post production note: I did nothing in Adobe Photoshop to Celia other than remove a few stray hairs from her face -- HER FACE AND EYES are 99 percent untouched -- I would normally whiten the whites of the eyes a bit, dodge and burn, in a scene like this (no flash or reflector used in dim ambient lighting), but I left her face as it came out perfect of Adobe Camera RAW ACR, edited (and archived) in ProPhotoRGB 16-bit Photoshop .psd Adjustment Layers.

Camera note in the above mugshot: 1600 iso -- wide open aperature -- 1/20th second -- Nikon D70 .nef format -- shot 6:40pm on May 5th.

That equates to very low ambient lighting -- I can't recall if I was setup on my heavy Bogen 3250 tripod (or hand held for the mugshot), but I nailed focus on the eyes in either case -- it's just overall grainy from the high iso and shallow depth of field from the wide open aperture. I definitely would have been on my Bogen for the bottom two shots in that low natural lighting.

Creative: If Celia's portrait was a musical note it would be in perfect pitch!

INDIGENOUS TRIBAL LIFESTYLE Turn of the 21st Century:

This is Celia's home in 2006 (a one-room shack located in an historically impoverished indigenous tribal region of Mexico), she is pictured inspecting a bundle of fresh juncus reeds Eva Salazar just dropped off. This type of harvested juncus is used for weaving traditional California Indian juncus baskets like Celia is holding in the photo below.

The dog was a wild card in this photo -- it was darting through the doorway when I clicked the shutter -- I got lucky with the timing -- but I've always been lucky this way.

Celia Silva holds one of her recent Kumiai Indian coiled juncus baskets for a third photograph in this professional portrait series.

For more interesting original multimedia content on the Mexican tribal community ranches near Celia's ejido: