They are there… without a reason. But they still endure. I was thinking in what happens when a person don’t have a reason in life, perhaps these old buildings have an answer. Perhaps beyond their reason to be they are a kind of memory or just an inertia of existence. Traveling across the time second by second.
my blue train in the forgotten city
One of my brothers gave me his Olympus SP-500uz. I used it till learn everything, thanks to a fault (I took it to the beach without protection) I only could use it in manual mode. Thus way I learnt without help to use a camera properly to follow my desires. I liked so much the experience that I searched for the perfect camera for me, this was the Sony R1, purchase that I never regret and if you see the metadata is my most used camera, even I prefer it to the Fujifilm X-E1 that has better image quality but it’s not so enjoyable to use as the R1, and using a tripod there is no much difference. I gave the Olympus to our little brother and meanwhile I had to wait that the R1 arrived from US to Perú… I haven’t any camera except the one from my cell phone… So I asked to father one of his film cameras. My father is generous so I could choice any of them (besides he doesn’t use no one of them in this digital age, lol) There was a zenith, a Olympus pen and the Canon EF, a.k.a. black beauty. A FD mount camera made of pure black metal.
I had no problems in use it because I knew, thanks to the Olympus, to operate any camera in manual mode, so I take a little journey to a city I’d never been, Ayaviri, a pair of rolls and the adventure began. What you are going to see are my first photos ever done in a film camera. What a pity that in Puno city (never trust anything in touristic cities) they sold me an expired agfaphoto 200 disguised as fresh Kodak gold 200. I had to correct the best I could by computer.
The first think I felt uncomfortable was the 50mm focal length. I am used to 24 or 28 (in 35mm equivalence), one exception was the next picc that I took with that 50mm lens.
everyday is the same
little cross
this seems a market!
bazar
The streets aren’t crowded, except I think when it’s party time, you know, the final days of June when it’s in our hemisphere the equivalent of Christmas to the northern hemisphere (the day when the Sun is not going to go down more)
sweet day
And well, I walked in middle of the streets in plane midday, and suddenly emerged a train!!!! it was like go back to my childhood when the train were more frequent and has a weight in the way you travelled around the country (actually the highways begun to be built since fifteen years ago), it was like see an old friend. I took with this roll much more photos of the train than the city:
blue dog with white nose
follow my steps
take me with u
the time is with us forever
red sign
leaves of grass say good bye
I cho cho choose you
the sharp ages of midday
let’s travel to far away realms
I wanted to go to Ayaviri because there are rock formations, unfortunately there wasn’t way to go so I had to stay just a few hours in the city. I ended the roll with the following images.
deep shadows
so many greens
house with rouge and closed lips
alone a distant motorbike
There are faults in the exposure. Time after I discovered that the cord that synchronize the ISO knob with the shutter was broken so the exposure was made a mess, the most have overexposure, and worse the roll was expired so I hope my composition defends my photographs.
Just for fun I took one image with the camera and another with my cheap cell phone camera from three years ago. No one is better I think, but the humble 2 megapixeles camera is a testament of how much the technology has advanced in digital photography (first the film version and bottom the camera phone version)
time and nature eathing the city
trees of Ayaviri
Qhapaq 