ashlar

It’s open, come in ;-)

It's open, come in ;-)

Big doors for big people.

Crown of flowers

Shadows like a black hug. Deep, inky shadows… traveling the surfaces of the rock in curves and lines… biting it as a lover. Because the shadows are made with the language of mysteries.

Lantern

Noon: a lantern write with its language of shadows in the wall: it wants to compete with the young men of the night before.

***

I don’t see many news, I think there is an obsession with the bad ones and so few of the good ones, because there is goodness in the world too. I think in the people of Brussels and Istanbul.

I have chosen to don’t forget, as it happened to me when child, that there are also solidarity and support even in war; that always we will find a way to be happy, doesn’t matter what people, who needs help for his behaviour, try to do to dirt the heart, it’s just in our nature to pay with compassion to ourselves. That’s what we do in my years as children and we got to survive in a better world. I trust that is going to happen there in the far and dear Europe.

Stairs of the Cathedral

Classic echoes in the white stones of another world.

***

Ecos clásicos en las piedras blancas de otro mundo.

Mooney blue

mooney blue

If I would have to say why I love the moon

She is one and unique in the universe.

I love her when she is in the sky.

I miss her when she is not there.

I love her when she is full of light.

I love her when she is in shadow.

In a field of billions of stars

The sky is filled just by you.

***

Si tuviera que decir por qué amo la Luna

Sólo hay una como ella en el universo.

La amo cuando está en el cielo.

La extraño cuando no está ahí.

La amo cuando está plena de luz.

La amo cuando está en sombras.

En un campo de miriadas de estrellas

Mi cielo está ocupado sólo por ti a.n.c.z.

Paolo et Francesa – escape from hell

Paolo et Francesca - scape from hell

Paolo and Francesca find a hole in the hell. They discover inside a tranquil blue sky and a colorful place to start again their love: hopefully they escape.

They fly a colorful city dreaming to touch each other with their wings. The colors start to melt inside the rotten shells, the sky burns and the shadows change their shapes into laughing beasts ripping Francesca with lupine tusks.

Paolo wakes up. He sees in silence the familiar whirlwind, there is no Francesca in it. He is alone.

Shapes and shadows of Santa Catalina…

Come in, I’ll show you the bluest world possible

Weeks ago I had published some photographs in film about this monastery in a visit with my friend Melissa (they say this monastery is the biggest on the world, probably because it certainly is a small city)

I process my photographs to match what I see and what I feel, sometimes I’m driven by a certain color or meaning, shooting at the same time with film helped me to understand better the colors. I hope you enjoy the trip.

Built with blocks of blue sky

Some of the buildings have a blue so intense that even the sky with its intense blue of the desert can appear almost invisible.

Sometimes a heart of flowers can be harder to break than a chain of iron

I wonder if that heart is product of a sensible gardener, or just product of my imagination…

Head portrait

There is a trend to use HDR techniques in photographs; put it in a quite simple, and unfair because it can get nice and natural images, way it’s a technique to get the most of details in shadows and highlights. But I love deep shadows, and under the sun of the desert in Santa Catalina the shadows are almost solid, turning the architecture in a sort of old watch pointing the path of time in the slow procession of the shadows.

Feline eye

A city without windows

It’s a crowded place with tourists, as I was in that moment, but being a city covering a large area there are always moments of ancient silence, that language that the ashlars of volcanic origin whisper after the heat of the day.

The photographs were shot in July, in winter; the season in the desert means clean blue skies.

If the ashes could talk…

I love kitchens, they are the place where a home has the strongest amount of familiar memories, conversations, moments, true life.

A red color trying to cross the blue wall

The photograph lines below is a place I’ve taken before so it could be familiar to you. But what I can say, I like it a lot and certainly to me it would be a wonderful place to read or just simply rest to the warm of the afternoon.

Enjoy the light and take a sit

Volumes and shapes of Santa Catalina

Blue and white

And that’s all, in a certain way it’s a sort of street photography of a city whose life now endures in a little (although quite comfortable and modern) corner. Although that’s good, I think it was a sad destiny to be in such a beautiful place but not by choice but for the cruel rules of tradition. In colonial times rich families used to send one daughter to buy influence from church. Now fortunately seems that heaven doesn’t need money ;-)

Remembering a time when it had fire

I walked centuries for you

Santa Catalina – An adventure in color

Another tale of another princess in hope of a green prince

The photographs of today were made with a film camera, a Samsung ECX-1, and a roll of Kodak Ektar 100. There aren’t skilled laboratories around me so I had to take a photograph of the negative and invert it in a special program, because if you just invert it simple turn to a bluish image. It take a lot of time and it’s my first processed roll, I hope you find one of your taste.

Taking a sunbath in the patio while talking about old times

These photographs were shot inside the cloisters of Santa Catalina de Siena Monastery, a colonial small city for the aristocracy. It’s said it’s the biggest of the word but I cannot find references to confirm that data.

Blue bliss in the light blessing the stair

Among the several rolls of film Ektar 100 is the most saturated so ideal for colorful compositions. Santa Catalina is a place of walls, mostly reds and blues. as a religious building I think it success in transmit an idea of peaceful meditation.

A carpet made with a shadow, a wall made with trees, a sky made with red and a space in blue

The little city, with its streets and plazas is a touristic attraction. The monastery still works but in a smaller corner. You know, there are no much demand to be nun these days. In colonial times people to get influence used to send their children to the church and the military, so it was mostly a monastery for the aristocracy.

a beautiful photographer in fields of a blue poem

And I saw this woman with red hair contrasting as a flower against the blue sky; so I felt in the urgency of take her portrait for, err, academic purposes. And this beautiful girl was for coincidence my friend Melissa! you can follow her chronicles in melissainthemiddle across the world in a way not so touristic and instead more experiential.