rive gauche glam

Paris, St. Germaine des Pres. We've been holed up in our own neck of the woods in Paris for three weeks but finally ventured across the Seine to revisit the fabulous Rive Gauche. When lounging comfortably in your own arrondissement, you can forget about the flashy, tourist-filled parts of the city and it's fun to dive back and ogle at the window displays and stroll through the little alleys. This display caught my eye because of the style of design as well as the elegant simplicity of the arrangement, with the "bows" so diligently aligned.

riding the rails

One of the benefits being a repeat visitor to Miami is the chance to explore some off-the-path places that are probably unknown to your typical South Beach dweller. Take the Gold Coast Railroad Museum in the city's south. When I got there, a busload of eight year olds was dutifully absorbing the usual field trip instructions on how not to demolish a public resource while I slipped past to check out the many carriages and engines in repose around the sprawling site. It actually used to be a base for airships toward the end of WWII but it was demolished by a monster hurricane in September 1945. Just how big this storm was can be seen in the massive concrete columns that tower over the Museum gift shop. They used to be supports for a hanger whose size just boggles the imagination. When it came down, it crushed the airships and planes inside, and the demolition was so complete that the Navy (thanks for the correction anonymous, but why so serious?) simply shuttered the entire base.

But today, it's home to a range of locomotives, diesel engines, and passenger and freight cars of the golden eras of rail, including the precursor to Air Force One, the presidential rail car. My personal favorite however was the California Zephyr, which was a shiny steel tube of art deco brilliance with an observation deck on top that afforded the well-heeled traveler glorious views of the mountains and valleys on its run between Chicago and San Francisco fifty years ago. Wandering through the stately cabins and lounges, you can positively feel the Mad Men aura and martini glamor. But for this selection of photos, I went with the sort of polar opposite. Many of the trains and railway cars in the Museum sit outside awaiting restoration, which naturally depends on whatever funds the place can scrape up. So, the ravages of Miami's climate are taking quite a toll on them and for me, I love that the fading colors of their original lives are being replaced by new color schemes of rust, flaking paint, and exposed metal and wood. It was unexpected inspiration.

the green desert

This is the view from the back of one of the seaside bluffs in San Carlos, on the coast of the Sea of Cortez. It's a favorite retreat for us when we desperately need the ultimate change of scene. This time it wasn't the cacti perched on the side of red rock coves or the many blues of the water that struck us but the verdant greens induced from the desert by summer rains. It was amazing just flying into Hermasillo 90 mins away and seeing the lush ground cover from the air. But up close, it was even better. Give your lens a polarizer and those greens and sky blues fairly burst out. 24-105mm at 32mm and f/7.1 for 1/100sec.

malestrom

Nicely evil-looking clouds moving into the city, this time from the east. Ten minutes later, you couldn't see this scene for the wind-driven rain and hail.

slick

Storm week continues (actually, lingers a little longer than a week) with this view of an oil slick on the road outside the apartment during a rainstorm. I was lucky that the light hit the street at such an angle to highlight the oil as it seeped from the road's centerline toward the drain. A little reminiscent perhaps of the famous spill not far from us in the Gulf. You can see the Volvo hatchback slicing through the slick, its tires cutting a line across the oil momentarily, like some kind of chemical mower. The colors are great and it's so rare to get a chance to catch a spectrum like this. A little like the opposite of a rainbow, which to me implies cleanliness, finality after a storm, and a gentle reminder of nature's benevolence. Definitely not the case with this asphalt rainbow.

six flag tormenta

Another storm pounding the south of the city this week. It's been a cracking week for storms, although I'm sure Sylvie isn't as thrilled, having to experience them from the interior of our car as she wends her way back from campuses around the city. The flash floods that result from the severity of the storms (and the lack of foresight by city planners when it comes to drainage) can pose real threats to commuters across the city and play havoc with an already hopeless traffic environment. This storm was rolling along the foothills in the south and nicely framed the fun park just on the other side of the park from us. I'd love to roller coaster through one of these storms one day, although doubtless the threat posed by lightning strikes would rank you highly for candidacy on the Darwin list for most stupid exits from this mortal coil. f/22 and 0.6 second on a tripod, ISO 100.

la semana de las tormentas

Time to resort to the breathless "Discovery Channel"-like approach to blog posting. You know, something like: "It's Storm Week at the damofoto blog, time to relish all the chaos that comes with the DF wet season, when vast cloud banks scud in and sudden squalls pummel the capital each afternoon. Torrential downpours. Hail. Flash floods. Skeins of blue and green lightning. All in a single afternoon's "tormenta." Stay tuned for new posts showcasing mother nature's ruthless"...ahhh, you get the idea. This afternoon's sample was taken toward the south, using f/22, a lengthy shutter speed, and a tripod.

another age

Whenever I get bogged down by the perils of this metropolis - the bustle and battles - I pop back into Lightroom and sift through the travel shots for a little quiet inspiration. More often than not last year's trip to Burgundy furnishes the mental respite I'm hunting for. To look across young vines like these, streaked by lavender and crowned by storm clouds, you're really looking across the centuries. It's an age away from the clogged streets, racetrack sidewalks, and sonic assaults of the city. When gazing at an image like this, I don't even begrudge the French farmers their budget-sapping subsidies, it's all worthwhile even before you get your hands on the fruits of their labor.

the $20 million taste

Okay, so maybe the wine wasn't worth that much, but the new cellaring and admin facility for the wonderful Williams Selyem winery is. And being treated to a barrel tasting of their pinot noir, I felt a little like a millionaire myself. The assistant wine maker, Phil McGahan, is an Australian hailing from a small town in my own state of Queensland. He gained a degree in wine making in Australia and earned his spurs in the Hunter Valley outside Sydney before coming to Sonoma to join Williams Selyem. He works with wine maker Bob Cabral who has shot to prominence for his fabulous reds. Phil is both your typically laconic Aussie bloke with an added frisson of relentless energy and I wanted to capture this dichotomy, relying on a little shutter drag while he was pouring some pinot from the barrels in the new WS facility. It was a privileged peek behind the scenes at a label that has produced wines for White House dinners in addition to its own select wine club members.

vesper

This is one hardy feline. Not only does this plump ginger puss choose a classic Vespa seat for its evening nap, it also picks one of the busiest streets in the 9th Arrondissement in Paris as its less-than-private boudoir. According to our host this wonderfully balmy Parisian evening, this is a regular sight. Somehow the cat manages to tune out the boisterousness of the adjacent sidewalk cafes and restaurants and happily naps on this particular scooter, bringing many pedestrians to an abrupt and amazed halt. It might be that this individual takes advantage of a warm seat after the owner's evening commute, or it might purely be a sense of style. This is a Parisian cat, after all.

recycling

It's been a while since the last blog thanks to a tremendous amount of travel and so there is a wealth of new material for the blog. One of my favorites from the Paris visit was this wonderful chandelier. It's an old brass base that originally must have hosted some other shade fitting, but some bright spark has had the idea of plugging the frame with plastic cutlery. In this case, spoons, but there was another with plastic forks. I found the curvaceous contrast in this irresistible, especially in back and white. The store was in the 9th arrondissement and I think this image nicely sums up the mix of old and new that's prevalent throughout the neighborhood.

rake

Dashing style while raking it in. Chetewy, aka "Chester", in action. Rarely seen at the table these past weeks sadly, the action is far quieter without his cries of "Come on petit pou!" and singing of "que bonito nimilito". His slashing style of play is as entertaining as the audio accompaniment.

MACOver

Art in Mexico seems an under-rated feature, lagging behind foreign appreciation for food, history, and kitsch (see Lucha Libre) - in no particular order. But the Zona MACO exhibit has become quite possible my favorite thing above all else here (despite the growing evidence that my preference is actually the food) gathering as it does an astonishing array of wonderful local artists and others from abroad in one champagne-studded place.

MACO is shorthand for the Mexico Contemporary Art exhibition, and it attracts artists, galleries, buyers, and fanciers from all over the world. Works from Dutch artists appear alongside others from Argentina, New York and, naturally, Mexico itself. It's a vibrant array of the bold, bizarre, and boisterous, and the people strolling the floor of the Centro Banamex during the exhibition are as varied and interesting as the art. I've put up a full gallery of shots on my web site at http://www.damofoto.com but here's a little sample to liven up the blog.

run!

This one definitely didn't come from Banksy but I thought it notable for the same reasons that Banky's work appeals to me. This was painted on a guard rail alongside the small bridge that connects Paddington to Darlinghurst in Sydney. As I ambled toward St. Vincents Hospital from Paddo, I was struck by the small silhouettes in such an incongruous place. I love the sense of movement in the figures as well as the shape of the woman in the pair, as she seems plucked straight out of North by Northwest or a similar classic thriller. The flecks of black paint above and around them seem haphazard - problems with the spray can? - but they also form a nice exclamation point above the couple, which seems wholly in keeping with the theme. Looks stenciled but may not have been, but anyway, I loved it and so it is added to my growing collection of street art. With the 5D Mk II and 24-105mm f/4.

africa or...?

Mexico. Really? River crocodiles in Jalisco. Really. A drive around the hotel here at Cuixmala can be a little,well, misleading. Deceptive. Zebras graze alongside hearty Eland and you half expect to see giraffe hove into view at any minute. River crocodiles bask with their mouths agape to regulate their temperature, as their cousins do in so many parts of Africa. It's frankly a little weird to be seeing all this on the western coast of Mexico but here they are, thanks to the eccentricities of British billionaires. The hotel here was once a private homestead with game roaming its 25,000 acres but now it caters to those seeking a true escape from the ordinary and its grounds are an enormous nature preserve. Although one thinks some of the local fauna isn't preserved for long around these specimens.

home is where you find it

Love this one. Especially the afternoon light and the really shallow depth of field, nicely isolating this Hermit Crab. It had been scurrying along the edge of a dune on the beach, and had gone defensive the moment I came within range with the 5D II and a 70-200mm f/2.8.

The eyes are also really captivating, as is the detail on the legs. I find these critters fascinating as they have such personality - at least in my mind - thanks to the shell they choose for their home. Some of the shells have a hole here and there, others are pristine and perfect. Some are colorful and stand out against the dunes, others are lighter and blend perfectly into the background. I guess the choice of a home and how we treat it are universal after all. Taken at Playa Escondida at Cuixmala, Jalisco.

china doll monday

Before slipping out of Sydney once again, I had a hankering to hunker down at one of the restaurants now part of the old Woolloomooloo passenger terminal and wharf. China Doll grabbed my eye and stoked the taste buds but I had no idea I was in for one of the best Asian meals of my life. I won't go all Trip Advisor here, but the slow-braised Wagyu beef in the Panang curry was so insanely tender I could cut it with the serving spoon. I spent a very happy couple of hours sipping Laroche Petit Chablis and wading through several dishes while also satiating my appetite for more of the current Kindle selection, "After the Deluge." In between reading and watching the chopsticks in action, I noticed the weather-faded and grease-streaked sun awning was doing a pretty neat impression of a tobacco filter on the city skyline, particularly the silhouette it made of the Centerpoint tower. So I dropped the Kindle - for a moment - and picked up the 5.

old haunts

Revisiting some old stomping grounds in Sydney's Paddington, it was astonishing to see how the pubs along Oxford St. are being transformed into more stylish lounges, employing bistro-like kitchens to update the standard pub fare and placing greater emphasis on individual decor to distinguish themselves. I was most surprised to see how one of my old favorites, The Light Brigade Hotel, has shed its traditional origins and embraced the modern. The rows of polished bar stools arranged neatly around the lounge were wonderfully eye-catching and again I bled the colors to lend a little more atmosphere and highlight the gleaming steel.

alan's blues

Walking toward Potts Point from the Cross in Sydney early this morning I was amazed to hear the unmistakable sound of a steel guitar over the bursts of traffic noise. It was coming from the Potts Point market, near the doorstep of the infamous "Bourbon and Beefsteak" bar. There, on a bench between a fruit juice stand and a cluster of potted palms and flowers for sale, was a man playing some Robert Johnson blues on a National steel guitar, providing a wonderful soundtrack to the casual wandering of the customers and the happy nattering of the vendors.

After listening to a couple of songs, I wandered over to him and began chatting about the guitar and his playing, as I've long been a fan of the Delta blues. It turned out that the guitarist, Alan, had quite a story to tell of his life with music, which took a turn from rock to blues when he was walking down a street in Adelaide in the early '60s and heard a unique sound coming from one of the pubs. Backtracking and ducking into the bar to investigate, he found the legendary American blues duo Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. I was stunned when he mentioned them. There aren't many folks these days know of this incredible blues pair, whose harmonica, guitar, and vocals make your feet tap from the first bar. It was amazing to me Alan had heard these two live, in the 60s, in Adelaide of all places.

"I was playing in a sort of Beatles band," Alan said, "but I'd never heard anything like this." He got hooked when Brownie sang a line recounting a conversation he had with a friend about happiness, something he didn't think he'd be able to recognize if he found it, and that sank in for the young Alan.

Years later, he'd moved to Sydney, played Jazz, rock, and folk but he was still devoted to the blues. He bought his third guitar, a used Martin, and his wife, he says, told him three was enough. "She finally walked out after I got to 17," he chuckled.

Talking about the day he bought the National, he sounded as excited as he must have been the day he laid eyes on it. He had just put down $5,000 on a brand new Martin ("A mate looked at it, and he said 'It just looks like a normal guitar'," Alan said, shaking his head at his friend's ignorance) but when he saw the steel guitar glittering in the store, he momentarily forgot the brand-spanking new guitar of his dreams. Minutes later - and despite the store owner mentioning a 25% discount on all items in a couple of weeks - he walked out with the National. He couldn't risk someone else grabbing it up.

That was in 2004. Now, he appreciates how the gorgeous sound of a steel guitar lent an edge to certain blues guitarists back in the States who needed a distinctive sound, an edge, to ensure the coins came to their street corner rather than to the competition at the other end of the block.

We chatted for so long I began to feel guilty for distracting him and for depriving the market of its astonishingly unusual musical attraction. Alan jumped into Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" and a couple nibbling their bacon and egg sandwiches began dancing away next to him.

Now I'm listening to Sonny and Brownie on my laptop back in the hotel. "Oh honey, take it easy, 'till I make a little money..."

endangered cats

While on an automotive theme for a moment, I was thinking this morning after posting the alfa rainbow shot about the sad demise of the hood ornament. One supposes it's likely due to the prevalence of vandalism these days, and perhaps a cost consciousness among manufacturers in a less-than-gilded age, but the little sculptures that used to mark a marquee are now few and far between. Winged Victory on the Rolls Royce, the tri-pointed Mercedes star, even the gnarled ram's head of Dodge. And of course, the lithe and ferocious silvery cat of Jaguar. Makes the sighting of one such as this from a Jag reposing in a Toorak street in Melbourne all the more wistful. With the 5D Mk II at 105mm and f5.6 and 1/250 sec.

alfa rainbow

I should have taken this as a portent and bought the darn thing. Nearly every day I pass by a Fiat dealership and ogle its trio of Alfa Romeos, all of them Spiders. As we returned from a stroll around Polanco on a warm Sunday afternoon and wound our way back to the corner with the dealership, I noticed the spectrum of light cast on the front fender and lights of the convertible Spider and thought I'd try to capture it. You can never replicate the true intensity or vibrancy of the colors but I still thought the 5D Mk II did a fine job. I still think it's an omen. Must. Own. Spider.

hosteria la bota

A long weekend in Mexico City is a true gift as many of the city's more than 20 million inhabitants take the opportunity to revisit home towns, head to parties in the surrounds, or simply lay low and exhale. We thought it a good time to go check out the emerging Calle Regina block to see what gives. The New York Times had finally published a piece by a friend of a friend about the bar scene there, giving us a great excuse to head into the center of town for a change. The Times must have had the piece "in the can" as we say for quite some time because we discovered the bar we wanted to meet at, Hosteria la Bota, had actually moved one block into Calle San Jeronimo. It's still a great dive though, with a good mix of odd drinks, including some Spanish mixes, and walls lined with hundreds of little wooden boxes that once housed cigars or other bits and that had been transformed into miniature art galleries of their own. I was thrilled just to be able to relax over a tequila, which arrived with a lime positioned neatly just so. The Canon G11 is the perfect low-light option for these sort of adventures as it seems to retain the feel, especially as you crank up the ISO and introduce a little more grain.

marais marvel

Okay, so I've been letting monochrome or its variations get the best of me lately. I attribute it to too many coffee table book purchases and an inexplicable burst of affection for all things Avedon. But recent searches through my photos for a personal project have rekindled my fondness for color and leave it to Paris to furnish an appropriate example. It's a shoe store in the Marais that had a color palette that immediately told you this isn't the place to take your grandma for comfy walking shoes. The store design was perfectly in keeping with the product, which was edgy, fun, and sexy. Yay for color.

chandeliers

Queenstown Park Hotel, New Zealand, 2009.

old faithful

Feeling hemmed in today by the ferocity of the noise as the apartment above goes through renovation, so needed to remind myself that tranquility does exist somewhere. New Zealand is still fresh in my mind, and so I finally got around to transferring my shots from my travel laptop to the desktop. Thought this was suitably inspiring, planning to put it onto some Velvet Fine Art paper as soon as I get the chance. This was taken on the road between Queenstown and Glenorchy as we returned from a four-wheel drive trek to the Dart River.

cosas de vaquero

Back to the Museo de Arte Popular in DF today, this time to introduce Sylvie's parents to the splendors of contemporary Mexican art. Definitely one of our favorite places. One of the displays I didn't really pay close attention to last time was a range of Mexican cowboy (vaquero) staples - pistol holsters, spurs, bridle, and and entire saddle. The leatherwork is intricate but understated and timeless, while the engraving on the metal pieces is ornate and simply gorgeous. It's incongruous seeing such functional beauty in this oft-crumbled and dysfunctional city, and it certainly makes one yearn for the sparseness and minimal life of the cowboy. Taken with the G11, yielding a good bit of noise which I think goes well with the theme - I bled the color out a bit in Lightroom to enhance the country feel - not that there was much other than browns and white to begin with.

testing testing

Aperture used to be my photo editing program of choice until I returned to pro shooting and tried Lightroom while coming to grips with Photoshop. Now that Apple has released Aperture 3, and given Joe McNally's strong endorsement of it, I went back to see how Aperture compared. I'm usually a big booster of Apple goodies, as my multiple Mac purchases attest, but after some playing with the latest version of Aperture I still think Lightroom is king of the hill, combining as it does great workflow and file management with terrific editing tools. There are some bugs in the current beta version of Lightroom 3 that need to be ironed out (in particular importing and slideshows) but I don't doubt these will be sorted in the production release. As such, I think I'll be sticking with Lightroom for the foreseeable future, not least because of its integration with Photoshop itself, which is invaluable when you're pressed for time. Still, here are a couple of pics from Aperture that turned out quite nicely I think - the colors in the gay pride march photo have real punch and there's good sharpness in the volcano pic - but again, I think Aperture needs to learn from Lightroom's importation, workflow and file handling management if it's really going to cause Adobe any problems.

time travel

Just getting around to posting past shoots and linking them more effectively. Thanks to the blog-savvy SylvMilv, I've now got Flickr and the blog a little more integrated, which is tres helpful. Yay, SylvMilv.

Sperryville in the Fall, which I've highlighted on the blog before, is one of the true delights in Virginia. A picture postcard town, seemingly trapped in the years of the Eisenhower presidency, with good barbecue to boot. Who could ask for more? This is the first of several galleries I'll be posting that will highlight just 10 pictures of each location or shoot. It's just nice to edit oneself from time-to-time, I find it helps in composing in the first place.

the evolution of bruno

We're pretty lucky to have a couple of handsome house cats for impromptu shoots in this place, with Bruno definitely being the more challenging in that he's perpetually in motion, and of course completely, wonderfully, silkily black. Even the 5D Mk II has a hard time working out what the heck I'm trying to get it to focus on when he's the target. So good ol'-fashion manual focusing and a wide open aperture usually do the trick. I hadn't grabbed a good picture of the tyke for a while so I used the happy convergence of subject (perched on a couch-bound Sylvie) and camera (handy from snapping snow-capped peaks earlier) to remedy that deficit.

So here he is, about five months of age and getting perkier and more confident each day. Remarkably, the Sassmonster has a ball wrestling and racing him, and both set new records for cuteness each time they curl on or around the napping Sylv's head. That shot to come.

the calavera history of mexico

We spent the past weekend hiding from the daily calamity that is Mexico City by stealthily hiding away in...Mexico City. We slipped into the new St. Regis Hotel at the Diana fountain on Reforma, and enjoyed the double-glazed, room-serviced serenity within. We decided to become tourists for a long weekend and hit a few museums downtown, including the wondrous Museo del Arte Popular. It's four floors of fun but what really grabbed me was the ground floor exhibition of Mexico's history told in calavera dioramas. Artists had focused on a few of the country's most important milestones on its way to independence and made scenes with the skeletal figures familiar from Day of the Dead celebrations. Some of them were intricate, others just hilarious. I was drawn to this one, recounting the uprising against the French of Cinco de Mayo. It's a shame I don't have a James Cameron camera so you'll just have to believe me that this was a really fetching 3D arrangement made of plastic and cardboard. It gets the point across. Pardon the pun.

the clouds lift

Alright, so you've seen this view before if you've seen this blog, but maybe not quite like this. We've had a week of dense cloud, occasional rain, and winds of up to 75km/h. I've been waiting expectantly for the clouds to clear to see whether the unseasonal cold temperatures had brought fresh snow to the volcanoes and this is what we're seeing today. I was gawping at the mountains ringing Queenstown in New Zealand a couple of weeks ago, and now Mexico seems intent upon showing its own beautiful vistas. Canon 5D Mk II with the 24-105mm f/4 at f/11 and 1/125 sec.

second act

Or maybe third? One of the delights of being in Queenstown at the end of 2009 was resuming contact with Darren Lovell, co-owner and chef at Fishbone, one of the town's most popular eateries. Darren and I first encountered each other more than 20 years ago in tiny pre-fab office built next to the printing presses for Time Out magazine in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane. We were both starting our journalism careers fresh out of university and most likely cutting short our lives by a couple of years thanks to the smoke we inhaled from Tony Grant Taylor and Paul Syvret in our fluro-lit hotbed of freelance writing.

We both ended up in Sydney for different organizations before setting off abroad to pursue our careers, and naturally drifted away from regular contact. I received an email out of the blue some time back from Darren saying he was taking over a restaurant in Queenstown and so when Sylvie and I arrived there we tracked him down and took him to lunch at Eichardt's, a hotel with a cosy bar and restaurant where I took this shot with the 5D and available light. Really, he hasn't changed a bit in 20 years. Swine. He and Mark arranged a wonderful dinner, with free champagne, for Sylvie and I and we loved every bite. Talented lads, and a wonderful and inspiring second act by an old friend.

sydney downpour

Back in beautiful Sydney briefly before returning to Mexico City, the second day of 2010 brought with it a magnificent storm that unleashed a torrent of rain reminiscent of the deluges of the tropical north. Having sifted through bargains at the Glebe market, my companions and I had wandered into Sappho Books and Cafe on Glebe Point Rd for a bite of lunch and we marveled at the fury of the downpour from the perfect table perch on the back patio. The rain cascading from the tin iron roof evoked dim memories of my first years in country Australia and also of the storms that sometimes used to lash the roof of my little townhouse in Brisbane when I worked as a reporter there many years ago. It was also a great time to test out the capabilities of the little G11, which handled the conditions splendidly I thought, although I think the patrons suspected I was some nut who'd never seen rain before, the way I scurried around for the best angle. All in the name of art, of course.

inches

Queenstown in New Zealand boasts of being the adventure capital of the world thanks to their range of adrenalin-testing pursuits, from heli-skiing to, of course, bungee jumping. One of the most popular and long-lived activities however is the Shotover jet boat ride, which entails donning a life jacket, strapping into a squat and muscular fire-engine-red craft, and losing lunch and sunglasses as it's thrown around on the Shotover River. I caught this one as it was beginning its run up the river and it shows pretty starkly how close the boats come to the rock walls on the riverside. Great fun I reckon, but, er, not this trip. Too much, um, bungee jumping to do. Swear. Even without retouching, the red of the boat shows up beautifully against the pale green of the water and the dark rocks methinks.