Blog | LomiMonk Photography

Feb

2011

Publication: Memorias de México Notebook

I was inspired my Daniel Milnor’s creations on Blurb.com not too long ago as I wrote in this post so I decided to dive into creating a notebook myself. I’ve been very excited about it but haven’t been able to write about it because I wanted it to be a surprise for my family. Thankfully the notebooks arrived from Blurb the other day and I in turn shipped them out to my siblings, parents, and their families. The cover of the book is shown above; the back cover is below.

All of the images except the one on the inside cover were taken during my recent trip to Mexico. The notebook is 5×8 and printed on 60lb paper; with high contrast black and white images. The cover and back cover are color. This book is intended to be used a journal of sorts but lends itself to many creative possibilities. It is wide ruled, but I also created the same book for my wife in college-rule as well as another for myself with blank pages.

Although this isn’t the first time I’ve used Blurb’s BookSmart software to work on a book, this is the first project I have completed. The book itself was easy to make as the software is pretty intuitive and customizable. This customizability is something I have really enjoyed as I have previously created books on Shutterfly and Costco’s MyPublisher program. Those book publishers are easy to work with and create a decent product but are limited in terms of layout options. I also like that BookSmart is a program that lives on my computer and uses compressed thumbnails of my images while creating the book. This allows for quick selection and changes as well as only having to upload those full resolution images I actually use in the book once I am ready to publish (I tend to import all the images I might use and then select while I am creating layout). Shutterfly requires upload on the front end-a needlessly time-consuming step.

The tricky part for me in creating this notebook was in determining its purpose. Originally I thought to create a notebook of creative black and white images depicting our family vacation in Mexico. As I moved along in photo selection and editing (the inside images need to be black and white and have their contrast boosted so they print well on the notebook paper) I needed to modify my creative endeavor with the end-user in mind: my family. This took a bit of doing as I wanted all 19 family members represented but I didn’t want this to be a book of snapshot portraits. Rather, what I wanted to create was something that represented the feel of the vacation experience as I remembered it. Given that I don’t generally shoot with black and white in mind while in Mexico, this made me really stretch creatively regarding subject matter, composition, image enhancement, and cropping.

To say I worked hard at it would be fair. To say I grew artistically as a result would be fair as well. To say I am excited and motivated to create more would be fair as well. So, that means I will be making some more notebooks in the months to come. This one is likely to not be for public sale as it is more family oriented but I hope to make another Mexico notebook, a gratitude notebook (to be used to note daily gratitudes), a Zen images notebook, and hopefully a Mexico picture book depicting my view of Mexico through its gorgeous colors. When these are published I will make them available through “Purchase” link at the top of the page.

Feb

2011

Chinese New Year Lion Dance: Part 2

Update: I originally referred to this group and event as Dragon Dances and Dragon Dancers and today I received and email from the drummer for this group, Bao Giang, who kindly informed me that they aren’t Dragon Dancers, but they are Lion Dancers. My apologies to Bao and his friends. Accordingly I have change the reference in these posts to reflect the more accurate name. Thanks Bao!

Yesterday I posted an image of a Lion Dance performance I visited here in Albuquerque put on by a local Buddhist Youth Group. It was a lot of fun, filled with energy, invigorating movement, firecrackers, drums, cymbals, pageantry, and good humor. I really enjoyed myself shooting this event and learned a lot about how I respond to what I am shooting (more on that it a future post) and about Lion Dances. The images here are all black and white, which is what I am trying to shoot these days, but I do have some color images coming in the next few days. Let me know what you think!

Feb

2011

Chinese New Year Lion Dance

Today I went to our local international and Asian food market because I heard there was going to be a Chinese New Year performance. Boy, I’m glad I went. We don’t have what would amount to a Chinatown here in Albuquerque but today’s performance makes me wish we did. I’m posting this shot as a little teaser today as I need some more time to process the images. Please check back over the next week for more images.

Feb

2011

Photo of the Day: Warzone

Yesterday I posted an image of the beach in Mexico bathed in bonfire light. This image was made just minutes after that one when the fellow tending the fire dropped some coconut palms on the fire, creating wonderful floating embers. I had to think quickly to both keep from getting burned by the embers and protect my equipment. Well worth it though!

Below are some more images made that evening:

Feb

2011

Photo of the Day: Beach Fire

The last night of our trip to Mexico we were fortunate to have a bonfire on the beach. I had been doing so much caring for our children and photographing the vacation that I felt I hadn’t spent much quality time with my extended family. So I marched out to the beach to join in the fun…with baby monitor, camera and tripod in hand. Needless to say, I didn’t spend much time sitting with everyone else. The light was just too cool!

Jan

2011

Photo of the Day: Buddha

There is a fancy resort hotel in Playa del Carmen on that we passed each day on the way to the beach that I just love. I’d photographed it several years ago and was very pleased with the result. The morning light hits it just perfectly and each time we passed it I was moved to photograph it again. I’m working up a little series of this statue to post next week but I thought I might provide a little preview at this time. I hope you enjoy it.

Jan

2011

El Mariachi Loco Quiere Bailar

On Christmas Eve in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, I managed to slip out for a short time to photograph what I could. Contrary to my previous night out photographing in town I didn’t have much planned out. I hoped to find a church with mass in process in the hopes there would be something interesting to photograph on this special night.

While I did find a church and photographed something meaningful to me, what I found first were several troupes of Mariachis playing for whoever would pay. This group was playing, exclusively, for 2 guys sitting on a stoop. They had their backs to the street while they sang several songs and were uncaring of any spectators. To them their entire audience was those two fellas (as well as the occasional pretty and scantily clad young woman that happened to walk by…)

This night, each group of Mariachis I came across ended their set with the raucous song, “El Mariachi Loco Quiere Bailar” (The Crazy Mariachi Wants to Dance). Of all the groups I witnessed, this group embodied the song the most.

Jan

2011

100 Strangers: Artist is a Foreign Land, Part 2

The other day I wrote a blog post about continuing with my 100 Strangers Project, a project designed to get me over my fear asking strangers if I can photograph them. Today’s post is a continuation of that effort and it feels fitting that this “stranger” was photographed just minutes after I finished photographing Hernan. Meet Marco Pat Uh:

Marco is quite the amazing artist. He was set up on the pedestrian avenue in Playa del Carmen selling his custom painted tiles, trivets, and refrigerator magnets. What drew me, however, was his method of painting. He was using his fingernail. The one on his pinkie finger. And he was fast at it.

Emboldened by my success carrying on a conversation with Hernan 5 minutes earlier I approached Marco, explained my project, and expressed an interest in photographing him while working. A true Yucatecan, he was humble and sweet and obliged gently. I felt I was free to shoot as much as I would have liked but I didn’t want to take advantage of his hospitality and so I made 4 or 5 images before buying one of his magnets (the one he is painting in the image above.)

Below are a few more of the photographs I made of him and his work:

Jan

2011

100 Strangers: Artist in a Foreign Land: Part 1

The other day I posted a list of my photographic goals for the year. I was quite motivated and I feel I gave myself some solid challenges for the year. Interestingly, I forgot to include one goal/project that I had just re-started: my 100 Strangers Project.

I began this project years ago when I first read about the challenge online. The object of this project is to approach, obtain permission to photograph, photograph, and discover something interesting about 100 strangers. Its aim is to help photographers overcome a fear of approaching others with the intent of photographing them as well as increase our sense of community. I thought it might be interesting to try but I failed to carry it very far. I think I managed about 11 strangers before letting it slip. You can view my initial effort on my Flickr.com page here.

Now that I have been photographing for a few years I realize that this project could help me with one of my photographic stumbling blocks: approaching people to ask if I could photograph them. So I thought I might give it another go and I made a point of doing so while in Mexico. Below is my first effort. His name is Hernan Santiago and he is an Argentinian photographer based in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. I came across his stand during an arts festival on the pedestrian avenue of Playa, Quinta Avenida (5th Avenue) and I was drawn to the images of Cuba he had on display. What I just loved about his work is that while he photographed some of the classic cars so lovingly maintained on that island nation, he also photographed some fascinating and wonderfully photogenic people there. Wonderful stuff!! He approached me after I had hung around his setup for a bit and we had a nice conversation in both Spanish and English, each making do with what we could in either language. We exchanged business cards and promises to check out each others websites. A lovely encounter with a like-minded person in a foreign land. I just love how photography can bring people together!

So meet Hernan Santiago (my 12th of 100 strangers) and some of his work: his website is www.byhernansantiago.com and it contains a mix of street photography, model shoots, weddings, and portraits. I especially like his street and portrait work.

Jan

2011

Playing with some long exposures in Mexico

On my recent trip to Mexico I read a book about shooting at the edges of the day: during twilight. I was very excited to try this and so took my tripod along. My first foray was both scouting session–I had an idea of something to shoot, but I wasn’t sure–as well as babysitting session, my 2 year old son wanted to come along. So for that experience I didn’t bother taking my tripod and just tried to test the light, get a sense of how things would turn out exposure-wise, and try to lock down on a subject. I took images every few minutes or so for quite some time (long enough to severely test my son’s patience) and ended up liking the lighting of those images create later, during nautical twilight. I was also intent on keeping an eye on my son at the same time…so this first shot, as you can see, is a bit blurry.

This next one came out better given I had a tripod and was without child for the moment. I’m happy with the exposure but I feel like the movement in the boats is a bit distracting. I’m working on processing a few others from the evening so I may yet discover something that satisfies me. For those who are interested the pier here is the same from a previous post.

This third shot was something I came across on a pier that was being lit by the full moon. This pier is off-limits after the ferry to Cozumel shuts down for the evening and I was shooting over the security barrier but my camera would not auto-focus without some extra help. So I whipped out my handy, military issue, high powered flashlight and lit up the posts with the power of 100,000 candles. Success!! But I hadn’t counted on accidentally lighting up the slumbering security guard as well. Oops!! You can’t see him but he advanced on me right in the frame and said something unintelligible to me but whose message was quite clear. Eeek! My first photographic confrontation! Luckily I put on my best cheezy grin, showed him the image I had just make and said, “bellissima photo, no?”