TARRAGONA, Spain (AP) — Associated Press photographer and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Emilio Morenatti of Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, has visited greater than 50 countries in his acclaimed 30-year profession. Here's what he needed to say concerning the coverage of the Castells in his home country.
Why this photo?
This is the biggest “castells” – human tower competition – and one of the crucial essential traditions in Catalonia, going down in an old bullring in Tarragona. There the “collas” – teams – gather to compete against one another over a weekend to construct the most effective human tower. Some of those towers reach heights of over 16 meters (52½ feet) and require greater than 1,000 people in perfect formation to succeed in them.
How I took this photo
Although it seems that the photo was taken with a drone, that isn’t the case. It is definitely an almost overhead shot, taken from a narrow catwalk suspended about 30 meters (98 feet) high, using a 17mm wide-angle lens mounted on a Sony Alpha 1 camera. To work at this height, you need to wear a security belt and, above all, not be afraid of heights. I even have suffered from dizziness since losing my leg in a Taliban attack in Afghanistan, so the challenge of walking along a shaky catwalk with every step and movement was even greater.
Why it really works
I imagine this photo works because a beam of sunshine illuminates the highest of the human tower, highlighting it and separating it from the remaining of the image, which stays barely darker. But this didn't occur by likelihood. I had been watching since early morning as a timid ray of sunlight entered the world from the side, so all I needed to do was calculate and wait for the peak of one in all the towers to intercept it. And that's exactly what happened. The higher the highest of the human tower rose, the closer it got here to the beam of sunshine that was already crossing the square, becoming increasingly more visible along the way in which. So when the last person to crown the tower – on this case a six-year-old girl – raised her right hand in a victory gesture, I knew it was precisely the moment I had been waiting for.
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