Trying something new is an experience that can only be lived through once. A baby’s first step can never be recreated; a first love cannot be reenacted. Life is full of new experiences, and I set out to capture one of those moments though photographs. My friend Dolores was trying on the first mariachi traje (Mariachi suit) she ever had, and I wanted to observe this experience and document it. Using the guidelines of an observational documentary mode, as defined by Bill Nichols, I used this opportunity to become a silent observer to a nonfiction moment.

The photographs start off with a photo of her normal outfit of typical urban clothing. She was surfing on her phone, relaxing before she had to get dressed.  After a while she got up and went to her room to start putting on the suit. I followed and interacted with the environment to get different angles, but left my subject alone as she started getting ready. The pictures then progress into her process of trying on her traje, and putting the layers on in pieces. She is observed while she puts her make up on, takes a selfie, and puts on the bottom half of the outfit. As a fully dressed mariachi, she takes out her instrument to tune it and has completed her outfit transformation.

The photos I took were in chronological order, which I left in color in order to give the traje’s blue and gold some justice. I did not Photoshop or crop any of the pictures, because I wanted to show what was in front of me through the pictures as accurately as I could. I used the same approach that the Mayles brothers used in their film Grey Gardens of moving around the room to capture a scene without directing the actions of the characters. This technique of letting a scene unfold before a camera can also be seen in the film Nanook of the North, in which Flaherty gives his audience the impression that he is merely a bystander in the events that are occurring in front of him (Nichols 154).

There is of course the issue of having the subject being constantly aware of the camera’s presence, as pointed out by Nichols regarding the obtainment of participant permission and ethics. Since I asked Dolores if I could take photos, I had the option of being able to walk around with my camera out. I could tell that she was aware of my camera because she often glanced at it, but there were still moments of unfiltered responses. The picture of Dolores looking at herself in the mirror after finally settling her sombrero is one of the moments that, as an observer to the scene, I wanted to capture as with as raw reality as possible. I was not being told what was going on in her mind or what she was planning on doing next within the moments that I captured, which is something that I wanted to convey to the audience by not putting captions on the photographs. My experience as an observer did not give me the voice-of-god authority of a narrator, and I wanted to show these ethics through my choice of photograph presentation.  It was an interesting experience to witness, and one that I am glad I could show a perspective of in photographs.