Having spent a few short hours that morning exploring the beautiful, abandoned communist monument, Buzludzha; I bounced down south east Bulgaria’s beaten B-roads towards the Turkish border (Conditions that had become substantially more brutal after my beloved Land Rover had so spectacularly conked out on me… and the not so off-roady, yet ever reliable, Vaxhall Vectra stepped up to the mark.).
Late afternoon, cruising down a particularly quiet bit of highway, I drove past a man staggering along the side of the road. He was crying. I pulled over, grabbing my camera to get a picture of him walking, alone, up the empty road towards a blind crest. As I was looking through my lens, he began to wonder toward the centre of the on-coming lane. Reaching it, he collapsed to his hands and knees and thrust his face to the ground.
I sped back up the slope, arriving at the top to see another car approaching some way off. I flashed my lights and sounded my horn until the new vehicle began to slow, it was at this point I saw it’s markings. The patrol vehicle pulled up, it’s owner looking sternly at me, which I greeted with various points and gestures over the lip of the hill to the still hidden Bulgarian Man.
It took about 20 minutes for the officer to ‘persuade’ him into the car and drive away.
I didn’t take any pictures of this, nor the small pool of blood on the tarmac and the man’s blooded face. I’m not sure if I should have… Part of me regrets not taking his picture, it was the most real thing I’d seen in a while. But it didn’t seem right in the situation. And yet, gaining confidence as a photographer has helped me stop and take great pictures; one’s that before I would have deemed inappropriate or not worth stopping for, this moment is evidence of that.
I know the key to many great photographs has been real, unrestrained (and perhaps sometimes restrained) emotion. So, as I continued toward the Turkish boarder I thought that maturity as a photographer might mean over coming the fear of invading people’s lives with your camera; for the sake of a beautiful image, one that captures a true story with the potential to move or maybe even change people.
Tags: Adventure, awesome, best, Bulgaria, danger, Europe, Photography, Road trip, roadtrip, stories, story, stunning, Suicide, Travel, wonderful