13 years on: the EOS 5D Mark IV sheds new light on a fading Chinese tradition

Working by the light of a gas lamp, an elderly fisherman sits atop his bamboo raft as a bird dives overhead. The unlikely pair are fishing together, man and cormorant working in harmony in an ancient Chinese practice dating back 600 years. But the country's rapid modernisation has brought unprecedented tourism to the Li River, in the Guangxi region. Together with a lack of uptake among younger generations, it makes this a fading tradition.

For Canon Ambassador Joel Santos, who has built deep connections in the community over 13 years spent documenting this way of life, his sixth trip offered one of the final chances to document the cormorant fishermen. Taking the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV with him, he hoped this visit to Guangxi would produce his best work yet.

"The idea was to go somewhere I already knew well, that has been important to my work, to see what I could do with the technical advances that have been made in the cameras, sensors and lenses – to push them to the limit," Joel says. "At the same time, I was trying to reinvent something that I’ve shot many times before."

He first photographed the fishermen in 2006 and became captivated with the bridging of tradition and modernity. Two of his subjects, brothers Huang Yue Ming and Huang Yue Chang, are among the last six real fishermen in the region. They are both in their 90s now, and have been fishing since they were teenagers.

"It’s been their life story," Joel says. "But soon, one of the most beautiful stories of the past 600 years will become a memory. This was one of the last chances to photograph real fishermen who aren't the new puppets for tourism."

When Joel first photographed the fishermen, he used two early Canon digital cameras – a Canon EOS 350D and a Canon EOS 20D. "I had to be careful about ISO because those cameras were not too good with low light," Joel explains. "So I had to wait for a little bit after sunrise had begun, and a little bit before sunset time.

"On this new trip I was using an EOS 5D Mark IV and a bunch of L-series lenses, so I wanted to really test what I could see, especially in low light. And what kind of shadow recovery I would get from those files, and what kind of sharpness I would get with new, better L-series lenses."

As well as photographing the fishing, Joel also shot portraits in the men’s homes. On this trip his lens kit included the Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L III USM and the new tele-zoom, the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III USM. "I was really impressed with it," he recalls. "Optically it’s superb. The precision is amazing, as is the flare control and the stabilizer – I loved it."

Image Stabilization also proved to be a huge asset in the Canon EF 85mm f/1.4L IS USM. "I took portraits with this lens, and it’s amazing, because most primes aren’t stabilised, so it’s a rare thing. The 85mm is a very bright lens, but most of the time when you're shooting low light, you still don't have enough shutter speed to cope with the focal length you are using.

"Most of the time you cannot shoot over 1/100th of a second because you don't have enough light for that, or you have to push the ISO really high, to the point that it becomes ruined. I loved having this lens stabilised and using it like I was using a 50mm, so I could use it on 1/50th of a second, and the shots would be sharp."

Shooting 4K video

Documenting change

Together, Joel’s extensive body of work documents the cultural changes in the region, with the fishermen’s story speaking to a broader narrative of the modernisation revolution underway within China.

“Growth has been really fast in the last decade, and people have more money today than ever before,” he says. “Tourism, and especially internal tourism, has blown off the charts. In the 13 years since I first shot these fishermen, this kind of tradition has collapsed, because tourist growth in the region has been so high.”

This is encapsulated in Joel’s stark images of a blinding light show performance which sees the River Li illuminated with coloured lights. Choreographed by famous Chinese director Zhang Yi Mou, who was responsible for the lavish opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, it has made Yangshuo a tourist magnet – established in 2004, the show is now held two to three times a day, every day of the year, and employs over 5,000 people.

"It’s the biggest stage in the world,” says Joel. “It has become so famous that tourists flock to it." These tourists also take to the water at night to see cormorant fishing, but what they see is a performance, far from the real fishing experience – the excessive lights, movement and noise drive the fish away.

"Documenting these stories makes you think about how the world is changing," says Joel. "If we never changed, we’d still be living in caves, but at the same time, it’s frightening to see that something that has endured for more than 600 years can be lost in less than 10.

"I'm divided because when you lose a tradition, you lose knowledge, and that's something you'll be losing forever. But at the same time, it's kind of egoistic that you want people to stay as they are, just to keep a tradition."

As for the last of the cormorant fishermen, they too have mixed feelings. "They see the improvements tourism has brought to their lives, so in a way they accept the change in fishing traditions. They understand why the younger generations don’t care for it – they themselves have had a hard life, and the money you earn from fishing is not enough to pay for the things you need to survive nowadays. But they are really sad that the tradition might soon disappear."