In this Sunday, March 3, 2013 photo, hotel hostesses, who serve delegates of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference take souvenir photos at Tiananmen Square, which is closed to the public to function as a parking lot for buses transporting delegates, while the opening session of the CPPCC is held in the nearby Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)
In this Sunday, March 3, 2013 photo, hotel hostesses, who serve delegates of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference take souvenir photos at Tiananmen Square, which is closed to the public to function as a parking lot for buses transporting delegates, while the opening session of the CPPCC is held in the nearby Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)
In this Sunday, March 3, 2013 photo, journalists wander in front of an electronic screen that is showing slogans as part of a Chinese Communist Party's propaganda video at Tiananmen Square, while the opening session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference is held in the nearby Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. The slogan reads "To deepen the study and implementation of the spirit of the Communist Party's 18th National Congress." (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)
In this Sunday, March 3, 2013 photo, police officers bring explosive-sniffing dogs into police vans after patrolling at Tiananmen Square, which is closed to the public to function as a parking lot for buses carrying Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference delegates, while an opening session of the CPPCC is held in the nearby Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)
In this Monday, March 4, 2013 photo, a soldier dressed as an usher, front, stands guard at the Great Hall of the People, while delegates, one of them wearing an ethic outfit, walk up the steps to attend a session of the National People's Congress in Beijing, China. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)
In this Monday, March 4, 2013 photo, ethnic minority delegates wearing traditional attire march to the Great Hall of the People to attend a session of the National People's Congress in Beijing, China. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)
BEIJING (AP) ? Each spring, thousands of people from China's farthest reaches stream into the country's capital to attend the biggest event on the political calendar, the National People's Congress. It's a tightly orchestrated affair that rarely veers from the script, a challenging assignment for any photographer trying to capture interesting and compelling images of the event.
After years of covering these annual legislative sessions for The Associated Press, I decided to try something different this year. In an effort to present a fresh, new perspective, I turned to technology from the past. In this case, a film camera.
Infused with vibrant, saturated colors and a grainy texture that carries a hint of nostalgia, film photography conveys a richness in tone that tends to be missing in today's digital images. Shooting the often staid political meetings on film adds a sense of timelessness ? accentuating the feeling that these scenes have played out before.
To create a cinematic quality, I used a Hasselblad XPan camera that produces a panoramic format nearly twice as wide as the traditional 35mm frame that most photojournalists use. The panoramic view captures more details ? the people, the colors, the layers, and the spaces. It captures what's happening at the margins, not just at the center of the scene.
For example, one panorama shows delegates from the Xinjiang region of western China having group discussions, while their secretaries chat and a female official shields her face from the camera with a notebook.
In another, soldiers dressed as ushers guard a curtained corridor, with an anti-explosive device at one end of the frame and a huge vase at the other ? a fitting metaphor, perhaps, for the historical and political events playing out around them.
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