SOME PHOTOS I SHOULD HAVE USED
I often forget to practice what I preach. We have a teenage daughter. She has a cellphone and a computer. She takes selfies, about one every seventy-two seconds. She texts with thumbs so fast she's answered me twice before I've even asked a question. Add to that the vines and tweets and god knows what else and you see where I'm going. Sometimes we need to step back and participate in our lives and stop living through the lens of our cameras and iPhones. Now by this I don't mean stop taking pictures, especially since this is one of my passions, but my problem is that I sometimes go somewhere because I think it will make a good photo and I forget the reason I wanted to go to the event in the first place.
Now I have to reflect on what I've just written. Perhaps for some of us participating through the lens of our cameras is our reality. Perhaps for those who immerse themselves in an event only have their memory to rely on for their experiences. I know for me with a memory that is neither short-term nor long-term I'd be hard pressed to be able to relive my life without my pictures. So maybe these photos will last a little longer than my memory will.
After having put up six posts on Merida there are still a whole set of photos that I didn't use but wished I had. They didn't fit into any of my topics or I had too many and didn't want to stretch the post any longer than it already was. So here are some images I still wanted to use, some with captions and some just posted on their own visual merits.
Take a look:
His entire head wrapped against the intensity of the sun conjured up a bit of prejudicial fear, a fear produced by so many media images of a world filled with cowardice hiding behind the masks of anonymity. But the man was only a fisherman protecting himself against Mother Nature and sharing his bounty with the sea.
Color dominated every corner you turned in Merida. The joy and pride taken with the exterior of their homes by so many forced my finger to hit the camera icon on my iPhone every step I took down each unfamiliar street. Who could walk by these gems without snapping a shot.
What baffled me the most on many of these streets was how home and commerce seemed to exist side-by-side and how the commerce side seemed almost singularly devoted to the auto industry. Not a single residential block seemed to exist without an auto parts or repair business occupying at least one lot on the block.
As colorful as most of the exteriors were the interiors of some devoted a similar intensity of design through the use of frescoed walls.
This boutique hotel was a perfect example of the beautifully interiors in Merida.
I couldn't pass up this bedroom graced with a combination of art nouveau detail and the likeness of Raphael.
And there are times when even a bathroom's simplicity can resonate beauty.
Or how a plaster statue and a couple of childhood dolls can tell such a complex story.
And even when the painting was not intentional but the results of age the results were equally beautiful
or when nature decided to add its dash of color and panache
The anti-abortion sentiment is strong in this Catholic enclave. This statue stands in the middle of a square devoted to motherhood. The couple behind seemed engaged in paying their own respects to the statue and its propaganda.
A truck that drove around town advertising a gym and bowling alley all at the same time
Even dogs were fodder for my camera
And how could I close this out without letting you that they at least had a Starbucks
I couldn't leave Merida or my posts on Merida without a few last images of people both indigenous or there on a temporary basis.
A Mayan descendent in the midst of her agrarian bounty
A photography class in Uxmal learning the mechanics of a view camera
A woman contemplating her own history in the reflection of a painted Rococco mirror while a collection of mid-twentieth century photographs told a history of the rooms occupant.
And Thomas, the little eight-year old Aussie who with his mother was retracing the vacation his parents had made just before he was born and his father died.
No comments:
Post a Comment