Strike a Pose

Sometimes it's a treat to see the impact the presence of a camera can have, especially in a town like Guanajuato that is pure photographers' bait. It was a struggle to decide what to post on the blog that's representative of the place but then I thought about the moment I took this one and it became a cinch. There was a wedding in the Basilica de Nuestra Senora de Guanajuato as we walked up from the Jardin de la Union and some of the party were spilling out of the church. The gold of the young lady's dress caught my eye and I started to snap a couple of pictures, eliciting the usual sort of look I've  seen many times in tourist towns in Mexico (indeed, the world over). A mix of suspicion and mild annoyance - I call it the zoo lion look. But when the gent trailing the girl and her father started to vogue a little, I egged him on in my Aussie-inflected Spanish and suddenly the smiles came out and the vogue got even more fun. I think the picture evokes a lot of what I love about Guanuajuato - the color, the vibrancy, and the surprises seemingly around every corner. Using a 24-105mm f/4 at about 90mm.

Canon in a Cave

A Canon 40D can take far more punishment - thank goodness - than I would have imagined. I took one through the cave complex at Calcehtok in the Yucatan this past weekend, a trip that has obliterated many cameras before. Our intrepid trio, led by a third generation guide to the caves, scrambled up muddy walls, slithered along rock ledges 20 meters above the cave floors, and slid down from these perches on our butts. Elegant, we were not. The 40D, with a 50mm 1.4 attached, bounced off every outcrop, slammed against walls we abseiled, and was covered in grime and mud. And never missed a shot. Here, my brother Anthony dips into a Mayan water bowl, which has been collecting water drops for more than four hundred years at the cave entrance.

Automotively Challenged

As a red-blooded Australian male, car lust is firmly planted in the DNA strand, right alongside barbecuing, beer and fleeing the homeland. So when a friend pierced the haze of cigar smoke and Spanish slang of a recent poker game to ask if I would be interested in shooting his new ride, a 2009 Dodge Challenger, I leapt at the chance (actually, I bluffed, got called, bluffed some more,got called again, folded, shot the rest of my Scotch and tried to relight my cigar. Still, it was a reaction). On Saturday the Challenger duly arrived at my friend's apartment with a trio of car dealers who were understandably a touch fretful in handing over the keys to a 6.1 liter, V8 Hemi monster delivering 425 horsepower. The challenge, if you'll pardon the pun, is to reflect that kind of energy and power in a still photograph. As my pie-eyed pedal-pounding chum turned out of the parking area, I snapped a quick shot because I liked the angle and had a thought in mind that a little neon outlining in Photoshop would add flair - and reduce the cluttered background. With the sidewalk reflection coming out in oranges, yellows, blues and reds, I think it worked far better than I expected. And the client was sold. On the car, and the image.