Infinite staring

A signal from the hills

Once upon a time I was walking the countryside with a beautiful friend. She saw two subtle hills of the same size and pointing to them she told me “see, two breasts!” I laughed and as she knew my spicy imagination she expressed me her surprise because I didn’t think first that analogy. I didn’t know the reason neither. I reviewed mentally several images and I noticed that with those hills usually I title them with names as “two brothers” or “delicate waves across the ground of a sea of ichu”, but I didn’t think in anything erotic 😇, and if you dear reader are a male you know we cannot just stop to think with our erobrains, and if you’re a lady then you already know that our eyes have this double vision undressing you in one thousand and one nights of fantasies.

But I discovered the answer… in our culture hills are usually sacred, so we dance and pay to the earth with more solemnity there, we bond our mythic origins to specific hills, so for that reason I know understand why my names for compositions with hills have this aspect of almost reverence (but for other things my nasty vision works as usual :P 😈)

Texture of a moment

With greens and a light rain a summer song.

Stars in green

 

The image is a successful “scan” with my digital camera of a Fujfilm Pro400H negative film shot in a Samsung ECX-1 film camera and processed with Capture One. Film is so expensive so I need to reduce costs… besides there is no much difference between what the lab gave me and my processed files.

It’s part of the method I’ve developed and of course I’m going to share here :-)

Little hands with yellow offerings

fluffy heart

A long shadow

These days I prefer mysteries instead of explanations. There is a shadow that starts to get bigger. I have always these moments in which I prefer to just don’t hear nor see. To rest. I hope to travel the next week and besides to take some photographs. Actually that’s my main reason to take photographs: to get a moment alone with me, something like an introspective meditation.

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.

Green detail

Time to dream.

Amarillo (puntos)

 

Points of Yellow. I’d like to take more photos of fields but when they are in middle of the city it’s a bit suspicious. In the countryside is another story, the people are very happy to talk with you and they can invite you to the fields to see their work. I guess it’s the problem of trust in the big cities, of course the little towns have their problems too.