Vibrance

 

I am not happy with 35mm film quality. Grain is very distracting and the colors seems a bit harsh comparing to colors from medium format film, at least what I see comparing in internet galleries. And I don’t know if it worth it because although the medium has a particular beauty I cannot find a scanner that can transmit it to the digital medium. I sent the film camera to replace light seals and with that I would be fixing several malfunctions: stuck shutter (I fix it), broken link between iso knob and shutter (I fix it), there no exists anymore the batteries for light meter and electronic shutter velocities (I imported weincell equivalents from US), there are just standard films but not variety and much less the professional line (again I am importing them). With this expenses I think I am going to come back to watching TV!!! hehe

Instead my digital cameras works even malfunctioning, I can’t blame the camera for mistakes. I have two rolls of Portra 160 for use proximately. I think I do it more because I don’t like that machines are not being used than love for film. When child I always didn’t like film because the colors always were different from my memory, today I like it but exactly to exploit it inaccuracies.

I was thinking in film versus digital because today went to the technical service to see the camera, but without luck. I post today a photo from my Sony R1, as any digital camera is great to experiment with a lot of things, in this case a long exposure during day, after that I processed the image in lightroom, I used the trial version, but Photo Ninja won my heart so I purchased the latter and not the former, but sure I get some nice images.

Once upon a time a lake

This is a view from Puno’s bay. Those ships were built in England, taken in pieces using donkeys and assembled in the highest (navigable) lake in the world: the Titicaca. Funny (or sadly?), because we have thousand of years building ships, we navigated to Oceania and Antarctica.

They were two ships, Ollanta and Manco Capac, (Capac is a misspelled form of Qhapaq).

I had curiosity to see the port at night, but there was empty; in a certain way is like go to a museum to see objects from the past: there is no life.

BTW in the sky is, if I’m not wrong dear reader, the Jach’a Qhana (what you probably name Southern Cross), four brilliant stars in the middle top.

Summoning Mysterious Life from the Moon

 

I like to photograph the moon to balance the void that can be when the sky is empty of clouds, colors or buildings. Besides I think it’s a mystery, the way it could affect the human behaviour, even the fact that it’s enormous to be a satellite.

Juliaca is the second city with more local tv stations after Lima, (or is it the first? :D), the antennas are near our Apu Huaynarroque (apu is a sacred hill or mountain). Spaniards tried to destroy our sacred figures, but they couldn’t destroy the Pachamama (mother Earth), or the apus, so on the latter they put crosses. So today the apu has crosses and antennas, well, perhaps that means that we adore the TV!! LOL

Huaynacotas

a lady and the infinite

 

Some night a colleague called me. Apparently he needed to travel to Cotahuasi Canyon, to an obscure city called Huaynacotas to take some measures from a project but the journey last fifteen hours and to come back it’s needed at least two days. So he offered me to go with everything paid. I said oki doki so I took a bus to a city I’ve never heard before.

A road half ended, a super violent movie, and several hours after I arrived to the capital city, Cotahuasi, and I had to wait one hour more before another bus took me to Huaynacotas. There are buses just very early before the sunrise and in the afternoon to take the last buses to Arequipa from Cotahuasi. So I was prepared to stay between one or even five days.

But the mayor wasn’t in town (he was a day of distance in car) so I hadn’t nobody to take me to the distant places to measure. I went to the city hall to study the documents and used the few hours before go to the buses to take some photographs. I am not tourist, nor photographer, but I think there are some things that shouldn’t be forgotten, so I share some of them.

The morning was cold, but with the course of the day there was a sunny day.

arch in blue

S

Every town has moved from it’s original place, this is because the mess Spaniards caused when they invaded the Empire. The original place was probably in the ruins upside, it’s in the red top:

red ruins facing the blue gate

a typical day under the church

flock of clouds

let’s talk

tree preparing to colonize

Arequipa Avenue

free the colors!

don’t forget me

Fashion Red

 

 

I noticed a tendency in women dresses to use red or fuchsia tones. In Perú you can guess the precedence of a women from the colors or designs they have in their vestment. Of course that doesn’t apply to Peruvian western women because with their clothing you cannot guess their city but their shopping center ; – )

relief

Midday in Midgarden

Messiah

sylvester and fiery

door essential

Garden from dreams

breeze

erosion by blue

A polarizer it’s indispensable for everything that has light reflected as leaves, and with the harsh midday light it can be the difference between a shot that represent what we see against a chaos of white glints. But I reduced the intense blue it give to the atmosphere because that’s very dark compared with the natural midday blue.

Prayer

Duality

dancers in the top of the burning hill

Bitter fruits

Flower Constellation

As eternal proof to the person who sent me that I was there and not in an Arequipa hotel with alcohol, drugs and girls I took a selfie with my original hat from La Paz ;-), although I’d carried my light hat to hot weather because the temperature was a bit oppressive, this because it’s just to 2700 meters above the sea level (my own city is a thousand meters higher), and the day before I cut my cheek with the razor blade so I guess I arrived to Huaynacotas made a completely mess, lol.

regards

old road

Oasis

High Parliament of Trees

Serene march

Sinuous path

Hungry ground for clouds

let’s work the infinite

Cyclop with Chinese hat

red lips of Snow White

red walker in a sunny day

That was Huaynacotas, a place were women love red in their clothes, the houses are made of adobe, where there is a red watcher that speaks of ancient times, where everyday you see mountains, forests, roads that need days to go to anywhere and where your life is longer because one day there is like a week in a big city. It would be nice to be more time to understand it better. I’m aymara and found another from my kin there, a gentle woman that came from a city near my own city; Huaynacotas is actually a quechua town so in a certain way it’s like travel to a familiar realm but with those little differences that for be so similar are at the same time so big. I found kind people, I hope they are doing well.

You can’t play

 

Near the Cotahuasi Canyon (one of the deepest on the planet) there are little cities. This is a piece from one called Huaynacotas.

The time is slow and the distances can be measured by days. There is no much to do so you can do a lot of things. I took a great amount of photographs (and I always shoot the minimum, just what I don’t want to forget) in just a few hours. I couldn’t be there much time because to be one hour more would meant to be a day more. A day I didn’t, well, it was for a work, fortunately my work is my pleasure too ;).

Later, in twenty hours maybe, I’ll post a longer post about Huaynacotas.

Yellow Rocket to the Moon

 

Let’s build a yellow rocket, darling; and let’s go to a perfect blue moon; let’s do a country seen just in dreams; let’s forget everyday to come back to love again.
(Just thinking in grandfather and grandmother)

Calm, brother

 

 

I like soft skies. For that reason I try to not use polarizers or, as I did in the photograph, get a better representation of the leaves but at the same time digitally reduce the strong tone the sky had with the polarizer and recover the low and soft contrast I saw with these my blue eyes (just kidding, my grandfather has gray/green eyes but all the rest of us have black/brown ones)

Rustic purity

 

Busy days, more travels and more work. I hope to relax one day in a week.

Passenger: Cotahuasi

 

Passenger is a series of photographs I do; taken behind the window of a car or plane in movement. I don’t believe in such thing as a perfect photography (sharpness, dynamic range, accurate color reproduction, clean noise, etcetera) but in perfect ideas. My idea is to use the movement to change the image taken, I could use a higher ISO or use shutter priority and after that recover shadows in raw; but as I said I’m not searching the perfect photo but to represent an idea. This is a simple idea, the technic is pretty simple. Just relax the mind and take the landscape taking in account the velocity of the car and the moment just to shoot. Similar to a Japanese archer when is going to shot an arrow while galloping in a horse.

Ideally to notice some shapes before they look completely blurred the time should be less than a second. If it’s more you should move the camera to follow the subject (panning). 1/100 of second the distant objects could look static what usually looks not good because it seems a half idea, neither it’s not blurred nor it’s static. As always the rules are to be broken (when you know them perfectly)

black clouds upon the face

u and me

tree at dawn

remember the sea

till cover the planet

Waiting for Hooper

One of my favorite painters is Hooper. The tones, the way he paints the light, the life in the modernity. It’s like see a truth I suspected but don’t noticed till see mirrored in his art.

I always wonder how I could do spaces where effectively the myth of the city as a place to gathering could be real. Perhaps the Greeks were right when said that a city should have a limited size and nothing more, of course we had to change the slaves for robots :D