The winner of the XXV edition of the Almond Blossom photo contestwhich organizes the Municipality of Santiago del Teidemaintains that when he captured that image, entitled Color explosion“I was not thinking about the contest at all.”
Antonio David Taño Felipe considers himself, above all, an “amateur photographer”, a person who, driven by this hobby –which for him represents a true passion–, always carries a camera with him wherever he goes. “My faithful companion,” he says, in this case a Canon 70D.
He presented two images to the contest, as the rules allow, and the one that won the award was taken at the volcanic area known as Black Mountains. “I am part of a hiking group and we go hiking from Montaña de la Cruz to Montaña Bilma.”
However, far from adorning himself with technical and brainy explanations about the perfect frame, the search for the precise intensity of light, the necessary waiting time to capture the moment, the orientation, the angles, etc., Antonio David Taño admits, with total sincerity, that the image “was not sought”. He does recognize that “the moment helped”, that leaden environment, full of clouds and nuances, instead of the blue that usually reigns at those heights.
All in all, you can certainly guess in his instant theoretical knowledge and also good handling, both from a technical and compositional point of view. But the truth is that it is in the silence of the studio where the entire creative process culminates.. «The work of the image with photoshop is fundamental».
Antonio David Taño Felipe was born in the palmero municipality of El Paso on July 13, 1961. He studied Nautical University of La Laguna (ULL) and at the end of his studies he was enrolled for three years. “There is little left of the sea,” he says with a sigh. He understood that that life was not made for him and took advantage of the explosion of joy that the country experienced in 1992, with the Barcelona Olympics and the Seville Expo, to present himself to some oppositions that had been convened in Telefónica. He got the job and now, thirty years later, he is waiting for a separation plan that will give him time and personal freedom.
Nature is one of his passions. Thus, armed with the eye of his camera, he has learned to be patient; to get up early, no matter how hard it is, and to be cold or hot to take advantage of that fleeting moment of light of the sunrises and sunsets of the Islands. His work can be consulted and admired on the blog tanofotografia.wordpress.com.
The volcano, desire and pain
He confesses that, as a canary and palm tree, ever since he was a child he was attracted to nature and the power of volcanoes. And he does not hide that one of his greatest dreams was always to capture an eruption with his camera. That, although with only 9 years he lived, from afar, the outbreak of the Teneguía, in Fuencaliente, that October 1971. Inside him, the desire that that phenomenon would repeat itself was seething. “And in the end it happened, but in the worst place and in the worst way possible,” he comments, regarding the location of the eruptive mouth in the area of Cabeza de Vaca, in El Paso, where he is precisely from. natural. “Many of my relatives were affected from the first day,” he stresses with a sad tone. However, he cannot escape the fact that “an eruption is a real spectacle”, although while he was taking pictures, “the enormous social drama and the disaster that was being experienced” came to mind.
