The Fool on the Roof

Probably one of my favourite locations in the world (Not that I have been around much) is the roof at my home. There I have seen countless sunsets and all kinds of cloud formation art. Here I share a couple of the best I have caught.

A great gig in the sky

The above is actually the side opposite to where the sun was setting, but the cloud was reflecting a nicely coloured light.

I'll follow the sun

An orange yellowish sunset with funny clouds. Taken with a pretty old Kodak Retinette, and surprisingly the picture came out fine.

Two too many

In a garage sale I found this pretty old looking little camera. A Brownie Flash IV in perfect working condition, well except for the flashbulb that wasn't quite there any more (Probably used a single shot disposable flashbulbs anyway). I couldn't resist her beauty so I took a few photos of her. And it had a very old roll winded in there.

Definitely too many

The whole package

It even conserved a couple of very old LR6 (AA) batteries, apparently then called Penlight batteries (Pila pluma fuente in spanish), beautiful.

The twins

Both bases down

Antiquities

Definitely Old

Sometimes technology just moves too fast, and before you know it your devices are now ridiculous and you're old. As of today I still have to use my VHS to record stuff from telly and watch later. Strangely enough, DVR's or other devices are difficult to procure where I live, they're only available through TV service provider at ridiculous prices. Nobody sells VHS tapes any more, so I must hang on to the few ones I've got. The Betamax is also operational, it has been saved to transfer all the family stuff recorded in those tapes to a more modern format; but I have failed to find the patience to perform such errand.

Three landscapes

(Click on the pictures to enlarge)

Fields near the mountainous woods of Mazamitla

Islets in a semi-deserted beach in Michoacán

The quaint city of Guanajuato

Just exemplifying again the wildly different landscapes that can be found in the region. Sadly the ever increasing reports violence in the zone has steered travellers away from these lands, specially for the first two. Sadder is that it is probably perfectly safe for anyone to go there; all there is is fear.

The Roll of the Ball

Old Game

So, what's with the ball? There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of sports and games that are played with balls (and by balls I mean rolling sphere-like bodies like the one shown in the picture) which evolve from a wide variety of unrelated cultural backgrounds. How many man-hours have been spent globally in watching all kinds and sizes of balls just rolling around? The oldest known ballgame is allegedly de Ulama, a version of the Mesoamerican ballgame (of death) whose roots extended back to at least the 2nd millennium BC. And there must have been quite lot of rolling long before that. That makes me wonder, is it just the simplicity of the most beautifully perfect shape in nature, that adapts to every gaming purpose and environment? Or is there something hard-wired into our genes that makes it impossible to take our minds off the roll of the ball? Just like a kitten to a yarn hank.

Landlord's Gaze

Land tenure has ever been a problem in Mexico. Fewer than 11,000 haciendas controlled 57 percent of the national territory at the beginning of the 20th century, which became one of triggering situations for the 1910 Mexican Revolution. After the civil war, a mayor reform was introduced, and remained in force until 1992. However it has visibly failed to create a proper distribution of land, only succeeded in making it very complicated. Today, with greater demand an less availability for every natural resource you may think of, most of the usable land is employed in inefficient, medieval, extensive farming (if at all employed).

More on the subject:

• Structure and history of land tenure in Mexico;
  http://www.internal-displacement.org/idmc/website/countries.nsf/(httpEnvelopes)/EA3B6CB789BAE118C12573AD00534184?OpenDocument
• Mexico-Land Tenure Agriculture:
  http://www.mongabay.com/history/mexico/mexico-land_tenure_agriculture.html
• Land Tenure and the Ejido Program in Mexico:
  http://www.applet-magic.com/ejido.htm

She's not dead, she's glad

A happy spider

The tree trunks of this garden near de city of Xalapa in Veracruz, were covered with these cheerful kind of spiders. Most of them weren't quite red, though, and this one in particular caught my attention. While trying to get the best portarit of her, I did not realise how close I actually was to the joyful little beasts. Fortunately, all of their legs managed to stay on the trunk's surface and the subject here, gave me a beautiful blushing smile for my photograph.

Properly receiving springtime in Mexico

I believe Mexican hot and sunny beaches enjoy worldwide fame because of their "good" weather. Well, if you wander a couple hundred kilometres inland from this heavenly pacific ocean seashores in the south-west, you might actually be surprised by the landscape.

You could, for example, be surprised my a mild tropical spring frost:

Waking up at 7 in the morning surprised us with frosted grass...

and car.

Or you could find yourself ascending a snowy road to a snowy peak

The snowy peak of El Nevado de Colima

A closer look

You might as well get lost in a tropical coniferous forest.

Some millimetres of snow in the forest

Or you might fancy some tacos fur lunch (too bad I didn't got a photo of this) just before a 3 pm snow shower, and then make a small ridiculous snowman behind a three.

Do I really look that ridiculous?

When cyclists approach the speed limits

Hat and Wheels

To the amusement of the drivers and passengers of an enormous traffic jam, this man decided to ride his his bike in the side of the road. The bicycle or the country man might not be actually much of a peculiarity on their own, but the combination is certainly not a common view.

Photograph of a photographer taking a photograph of a photographer taking a photograph of a photographer.

Flying

This is a picture taken a few years ago, when there where still a couple of this street photographers wondering around downtown expecting to find someone willing pay a few pesos for an instant photograph. That business must've died with the advent of compact-digital-mobile-photographing-gadgettery. A sad view that contrasted the surrounding happenings.

This picture reminded me of this other taken of a photographer in action, totally accidental. Its description might as well take us to infinity.

Irma over the mangrove swamps

Pestilence

Just to expose some more of the horrible water management of my home land, I searched for a picture of how this small waterfall on Santiago river, in the State of Jalisco, Mexico, looked like before it was severely polluted. This is what I found:

Taken from http://www.mexicoarmado.com/campismo/159949-lo-que-ya-no-veras-en-campamentos-fotos-antiguas.html
Attributed to Henry Jackson, 1884

This is what it looks like today:

You can see the foam flying through the air, its a truly stinking spectacle; the result of years abandonment in water pollution policies. People have been even murdered by this pollution (heavy metal poisoning! as you can read here) and yet little is being done about it.

Over a Grim Panorama

Lake Chapala's capricious shore

This is, I'd say a post-sunset panoramic picture of Lake Chapala. It is probably the most frequented leisure destinations by the inhabitants of the city I live. In the recent years the lake-shore has been coming and going, this picture was taken from the pier and you can see that the water is a little far in, but not the nearly the worst it has been. You can get an idea of how bad it was some fifteen years ago in this article by Tony Burton, it certainly was dying (I hadn't realized how hard it was to find anything informative in the net nowadays outside Wikipedia). Today the lake is in an OK water level, though the same can not be said about the pollution.

The panorama was stitched together using one of the greatest open source tools ever made; Hugin Panorma Photo Stitcher. Very versatile and powerful, at least for amateurish purposes.

Gothic Revival

Who can resist taking a picture of a Gothic construction under the light of a full-mooned thinly-clouded night sky?

Pink is like yellow, but not quite

While promenading near the university campus, I was stricken by the view of a tree with no leaves but full of yellow flowers. Not having my camera at hand I resigned to memorise the sight and promised myself to come back with a camera. It took me a while to actually return.

'cause pink is my favourite crayon

I found what I think is the same tree, only flowers had changed colour, or perhaps I never really found the three again. Still, the pink version looked cool enough.

PostApocalyptic conversations

The Tin Man

Not very far from the university campus I once attended, existed (or perhaps it still exists) this strange and slightly surreal playground. Though located in a pretty busy sector of the city, it always looked awfully lonely. These are the photographs of the day I tried to portray its solitude.

Conversations

Tea Party

Concentrating?

As you can see those are some pretty odd looking figures. Are they supposed to be hens? I only assumed they were birds because I think that nose of theirs is really a beak. I hope at least some zombie children visit this place on a regular basis.

Blues on the Railway

The Train Kept-a-rolling

The plasticky Baoca BC-9

I went on another bicycle trip across the the suburbs of my home town when I had the luck of seeing this train coming. Being a mechanical engineer and all, I can hardly stand still at powerfulness of these machines; it is always very impressive, no matter how old you are. I was carrying and old, plastic, 35mm camera, very lightweight and convenient in this kind of journey. I don't remember when I got this device nor do I know where it came from (I only know it is a Baoca BC-9 because it says so), but it turns out it takes pretty interesting little pictures like this one.

This reminds me of another one of the silly and useless activities I more or less regularly engage. I have this idea of collecting sounds of mundane life, like a photograph, but of a sound instead of a view. So here the sonography of a train rolling. It might have been a different train, in a different day from the one of the picture, but at least it was the same place.

Very likely, most of you will find this hundred of seconds absolutely uninteresting, but I like to think a good part of the perception of my reality comes from my ears. The loud and rhythmic sound of the rolling steel contributes to the amazement these artefacts generate in me. I could never be one of those people that are always using headphones while out on the street, I'd feel like I'm missing half of what's going on.

Swines and Skunks, Swines and Skunks Everywhere

You are probably a swine

Some stencil street art before this avenue was revamped. There isn't much of story behind this picture, I just tought it looked good in that light. Stencil graffiti is usually linked to political messages, which will fit perfectly in this case; but interpreting anything from this, is probably pushing it a little too hard.

The Mayans weren't wrong

View from the Temple of Kukulkan

The Mayans didn't predict the end on the world. They had great astronomers and mathematicians and in fact they had other calendars and numbers that can count for a couple more years ahead of December the 21st, 2012 (this, according to multiple sources-one of many here). Anyway, I think enough has been said about this. This is a picture from the stairs of the Temple of Kukulkan, the mayor pyramid in Chichén Itzá. It was taken a while ago before it became one of the New 7 Wonders of the World, and one could climb to the top of the stairs (which by the way were pretty scary).

Down to (the end of) it

Unfortunately, I have never been much of a mountain cyclist. In one of those scarce trips, I decided to film the descent down this very enjoyable trail through some woods near my home. I proceeded to tie this very old camera (so wouldn't be a considerable loss in case any branch, or the floor, crossed its way)  to the side of my helmet. As you can see, inexperience made me struggle down the path. The view angle is a bit low but I thought the video came out good enough to share since many, many locals bike this area and there's little or no information about this routes. Shamefully the trail (which was in a sort of unauthorized area for MTB) had been close down for soil conservation, and I was unable to get to the end of it.

Foosballer

Old and lonely Foosball player somewhere in Mexico

A while ago I bumped into this old Foosball table while visiting one of  the numerous quasi-ghost-towns in Mexico, where most men have left to find money elsewhere. I thought this scene reflected the abandonment of the place.