There’s a technique known as tilt-shift which makes your photos look like close-ups of a miniature landscape by throwing sections out of focus and whacking up the brightness. It usually takes a good half hour of fiddling with images in Photoshop to achieve the effect and I’ve never really been happy with the results. However, Tiltshiftmaker.com makes things a lot easier…
This photo is from the toll road back from Tequila. We were travelling in a teeny tiny little car…
There’s a fine tradition of Mexican wrestlers starring in B-Movies with titles like El Santo Vs. The Mummies of Guanajuato. Here’s a picture I took on Sunday evening. Dr.Sita had bought some sprouts on the stalk and I thought they looked very cool. Turns out they don’t, but anyway I noticed our Blue Demon money box containing Atticus’s college fund peering over, so then I got carried away adding our anthropomorphic cheese grater and titling it “Blue Demon and the Smiling Cheese Grater vs. The Brussel Sprouts of Death”.
Hope you like it. It may be the only post this week as I’m working at least 3 jobs…
This photo’s from November 2nd or thereabouts. I’ve not had a chance to go out and take new pictures in the last few days. Things have suddenly got very busy. I shall try and keep this blog going again but I’m going to take the weekend off. Hopefully very soon I’ll be trying to fit pictures of Seattle into the carefully made categories of this here phlog.
Also watch out for the about pages which now feature ads for Duaflex cameras… Have a great weekend, I’ll post again on Monday.
It’s great seeing the photos on Flickr of Lake Chapala. Ten years ago the worry was it was going to dry up completely, but after a couple of years’ record rain, it’s back to the highest levels I’ve ever seen. Combine that with high winds and it takes on a whole new aspect. One of my Flickr friends, FerdeSanta has published a series of photos and also posted this video to YouTube:
The raw, unprocessed material for tequila
More info on things to do in Guadalajara here.
Upgraded to WordPress 2.6 today hence the sudden post…
Off of Enrique Diaz de Leon in GDL, near the Mercado Juarez.
Y (gracias a Ale) si quieren casarse ahi o mandar hacer misas 38-25-09-45
( http://www.arquidiocesisgdl.org.mx/horariomisa/hrmisatemplos.php )
I just passed the 10,000 photos mark on Flickr. Here’s photo #10,000 from Guanatos Gwyn’s Flickrstream…
It’s from last Sunday morning’s impromptu Flickrtour in Guadalajara looking at the architecture of GDL’s own Luis Barragán in the Chapultepec area. Here’s the full set. I’d have rigged #10,000 to be a bit more interesting had I known… but I’ve uploaded worse and no mistake.
Day 4, involved the Tianguis Cultural, El Rincon de los Becerra where José got his mobile phone nicked/misplaced and a well nice birthday/bienvenido/it´s a Saturday party round Karla´s new mansion.
I spent the night at Amour Fou and headed straight for the Flickrtour a few hours later…
Day 5, Flickrtour, Chelas, Siesta, Pozole, Lucha Libre!, La Cava…
Anyway, many thanks to my 157 contacts, 52 friends and 2 family members and all of you who’ve encouraged my amateur photo shennanigans along the way with your comments, testimonials and kind words. Life would not be the same without Flickr, I’ve met so many great people and spend a good while every day enjoying their photography. Here’s to the next 10,000. Cheers!
Here is my “most interesting” set, and here’s the least interesting. Flickr’s the most fun $24.95 can buy… Enjoy!
Same place, different misspelling
The rotund, oft photographed mariachi in fisheye format.
Okay, I admit it, I forwent my vegetarianism for a week…
This one’s hot off the presses from the photos from last week all in Mexico. This is an old street with ancient wiring in the Mexcalzingo area of Guadalajara, otherwise perfectly maintained and clean. I like the colours, obviously 😉
What a week. I’m now catching up with all manner of business and starting to look at some of the 500 odd photos. Guadalajara, Mexico was absolutely brilliant. Since life moves pretty slowly round here in Alameda, I’m just going to serialise what I did day by day last week with accompanying photos. Tuesday: Arrival, Jose picked me up from the airport, my old mobile phone blinked back to life, got some keys cut, the bed inflated, and went for a quiet night in Cafe Colibri, Las Fuentes…
[flickr]set:72157605283758044[/flickr]
Wednesday: Checked me emails at J’s school, then headed straight for the centre and had molletes’n’coffee at Cafe D’Val, shoved the fisheye onto me camera and wandered round for a few hours via the usual centro historico landmarks such as the fountains, San Juan de Dios, La Fuente and suchlike. When it got too hot around 2ish, I headed back to Jose’s and we went round Javier’s to watch Atlas lose 3-0, then on to Fernando’s then on to Bar Scratch, then La Cava, then back to crash on Javier’s sofa…
Close my eyes and I can almost taste the tacos…
Probably not much blogging over the next week as I’ll be trying to cram in as much Mexican goodness as possible in the heart of Jalisco… Email me if you’re up for catching up while I’m around. Tuesday-Monday…
…the water’s warm, and there’s a bottle of tequila floating nearby somewhere.
I just got asked to write a bit about our time in Mexico for a blog on “Learning to Live in Mexico“. Here’s what I wrote:
What prompted you to move to Mexico?
My wife’s a sociology grad student and is writing her PhD dissertation on “How Tequila became Mexico’s national drink”. Her research naturally led us to Jalisco, Mexico, home of Tequila and also the place we met 10 years ago when I was studying as part of my undergraduate degree in Spanish. We thought we’d only be there for a year but managed to extend the stay after she won various grants and scholarships.
What was the biggest thing you had to adjust to in Mexico?
To be honest, I feel just as comfortable in Mexico as where I grew up in the UK or have lived in the US, if not more so. It’s actually quite hard to think of anything that really needed adjusting to.
Witnessing levels of poverty absent or hidden in other countries, like kids of 7 selling chewing gum on the streets or flowers in bars late at night is something you never fully get used to and there are constant reminders of the huge divides and contrasts of a modern Mexican city like Guadalajara. That would be the major thing, and everyone has their own way of assuaging their first-world guilt.
On a more prosaic level though, some people take a while to get used to the food, I never had any problems and ate food from street vendors almost every day (the trick is to look for places with queues of locals). Drinking bottled water was new to me and having the water guy deliver gallon bottles every few days was odd at first but it’s not exactly life-changing. Driving can be tricky at major intersections, but despite Guadalajara’s ever rising levels of traffic, it’s still nowhere near as dangerous/ frustrating as it is getting from A to B in the SF Bay Area. Paying tolls to use decent motorways does take some adjusting though. If you’re planning a long journey you’ll need a lot of cash handy to pay the tolls for the extremely modern, well-equipped roads. However you can plan ahead with a handy new web tool from the Transport Department’s website that tells you how much the charges will be.
If you had to leave Mexico and go back to your old lifestyle what would you miss most?
The people. A more welcoming, genuine, friendly and fun bunch of people you’d be hard pressed to find. I was welcomed into many homes, shown so many local events, foods, drinks, sights. Everyone has ideas of what to see, where to go and also show an interest in where you’re from and your own culture. I already had a few good Tapatian (from Guadalajara) friends when I arrived, but met many new people who still keep in touch 5 months after we left, offering us places to stay on our next visit (hopefully soon).
I also miss pay-as-you-go cell phones… you buy your fichas (credits), use them, recharge them. The way things should be… None of this dollar a day use it or not malarkey…
What advice would you give to someone considering moving to Mexico?
Make an effort to meet people & learn Spanish. There are all kinds of classes, events, forums and suchlike where you can make your stay infinitely more fun. I met a ton of people via the photo sharing site flickr.com and went on phototours with them to places off the beaten track with local guides and had a great time in cantinas and bars afterwards talking about Mexico and photography. There are also ex-pat sites such as chapala.com where you can meet folks, learn about local events and ask questions. Blogging and commenting on other people’s blogs is also a great way to make your friends at home jealous and a good way to meet folks in the area. I also signed up for seminars and classes on computing (PHP) and photography which were great for meeting people and learning useful things.
Also, buy a cell/mobile phone on day one. It’ll set you back about 40 bucks then you just recharge it with credits. It’ll be handy for not getting lost, enquiring about housing/accommodation, keeping in the loop with friends about what’s happening, meeting people, being ready for any transport breakdowns and all the usual… You name it…
Above all though, move on from considering moving to Mexico and just DO IT!
Need more persuading? Here’s a post on my Top 7 things to do in Guadalajara.
Mysterious circular mounds of earth from back in the day. In Jalisco, Mexico.