In No Great Hurry
A couple months ago I devoted a week of photography to the subject “In No Great Hurry” and although this is not the final image I submitted I like it very much. The images that I enjoy the most are the ones I can revisit long after I made them and see things I missed earlier, photographs that tell a story of a time and place.
This photo was taken in downtown Nairobi, Kenya in October 2014. The Boda-Boda drivers in Nairobi are relatively a new adaptation from their origin in the 1970’s; the word bodaboda comes from the English translation of border to border. When men would take goods on bicycle between the border towns in Kenya & Uganda, later they began ferrying people and adding an extra seat to their bikes. Since about 2004 this has evolved into a motorbike taxi and helped thousands of people in Nairobi find gainful employment. I found the Boda Boda to be a cheap and quick mode of getting around town. I came across this guy taking rest under a shade tree one afternoon and focusing on capturing that un-rushed attitude, this image fit perfectly! The wonderful thing about challenging myself with new subjects constantly is that it provides a fresh set of eyes always on the lookout for things I wouldn’t normally notice. Then later when I am looking for something new again these previous subjects constantly pop into my memory as I am photographing and seem to continue to add to my library of images. Clearly this man was “In No Great Hurry”!