July 2008 Archives

...So there were some reasons to go back to Mexico City...

I won't go into the strongest personal reason... none of your business whatsoever.

Some are just waiting to get back... others like me are just trying to move on.

It's weird how things work. I love home, I love the city, but I think I'm over it.

In Mexico, certain people from the countryside blog about this place, and rant about how awesome and great, and fucking special it is. I guess it is thaaat special when you grew up in a stinky town, and long to feel special in a place where you're not that unique. Anyway... I'll digress.


I still got a sweet spot for Mexico City deep within me. It's too bad I had to leave N temporarily, but well, she's tough and can kick anyone's ass without my help.

...So there was a photo-workshop...

Not any photo-workshop, but the meanest, baddest workshop in town: Foundry Photo Workshop.

Here's some name dropping if you're turned on by that:

• Kael Alford
• Paula Bronstein
• Andrea Bruce
• Renée C. Byer
• Guy Calaf
• Tewfic El-Sawy
• Stanley Greene
• Ron Haviv
• Eros Hoagland
• Hugo Infante
• Scott Mc Kiernan
• Michael Robinson Chavez
• Benjamin Rusnak
• Shaul Schwarz
• Stephanie Sinclair
• Khadir Van Lohuizen
• Holly Wilmeth
• Adam Wiseman
• Adriana Zebrauskas

Last, but not least... not teaching but helping veeeery much:

• Rodrigo Cruz
• Hugo Infante

I jumped between 3 classes: Multimedia Storytelling (Tewfic), Building a Reportage (Eros) and Photojournalist Bootcamp (Renee, Paula, Scott). It's too bad there were so many great photogs teaching at the same time.

Sort of reminded me of a little kid in a huge candy store, and only seconds to grab a few things before mom or dad calls.

And so a week passed by.

A somewhat strange week... with photographers from all over the world, lots of beer, avid desires to learn, to teach, to grow aware of what's around you, and introduce yourself to truly awesome guys... friendship in the air.

I did 3 things: Help translate, get access, and shoot.

Multimedia Storytelling

We headed to Sonora Market, to shoot traditional Mexican stuff.

Well, it's a market where you can find from toys, to herbal medicine, live animals, and healers. It was a bit daunting at first because I had not heard any good things from my father... he was a bit reluctant to let me go... but you know... I've been in worse places.

After trying to convince Lukcero Aghakán to let us take pictures, we looked around for someone else who would be willing to let us take photos and provide us with information about healers and the healing process. We actually never got to talk with Ms. Aghakán; one of her assistants made a point in saying that they had an arrangement with the big-evil Mexican TV network Televisa.

It sucked... I mean... traditional healers with their exclusivity contract with a tv station. Pleaseee...

After wandering around the market for some time, we spoke with Angel Guarda who was truly amazing. He explained the healing process, and was quite friendly when it came to share experiences and take pictures. Angel, you rock!

So here is what I did in the end...

It's not much but I liked the result:

...and well... being in Mexico City, I could not neglect my long time friends Betty and David.

Time was short, but we had fun. David showed us his latest creations and well, Betty smiled.

We went to El Hijo del Cuervo to have a couple of beers and just talk about everything we have always done.

The next day was calm. During the morning I attended the Building a Reportage lecture, and discussed some cool things about coherence of the story, and closeness (image-wise).

But since I had my wheels, I told Matt we could drive downtown and just walk and shoot pictures.

He's funny, and an awesome photographer. Check out MJR. N O W ! ! !

Also met Mustafah from MJR. He did a hardcore project about crime in Mexico City. He had awesome shots as well.

Mustafah was sitting down half awake, half asleep in a couch, so I approached and said:

J: Rough night?

M: Man, last night I was in a police raid and so sooo many firearms... like I'd never seen before. And it was hardcore... safeties off and just ready to shoot.

J: I don't think those guns had any safeties.

M: What do you mean?

J: Safety devices are considered "extra" in here... y'know... guns with safeties cost more, and well...

It was cool he did not get hurt, or shot. A police raid in Tepito... that's harcdore.

PJ Bootcamp.


This seemed like an interesting class, and since I was free, and not shooting, I thought I might as well go in.

So I opened the door and everyone went quiet and looked at me.

Typical "oh shit" moment.

M: Is this PJ Bootcamp?

Scott: Yes.


M: Can I stay? I'm interested to hear what you have to say.

Scott: Yeah, grab a chair.

And they kept reviewing people's projects, and I just felt infatuated with this class. It was about three teachers with incredibly trained eyes for photography telling you how to build a small story with images... and you brought them your photos straight from the camera and they would tell you what worked, and what sucked.

To have the three guys discussing out-loud about what photos were cool and which ones weren't - priceless.

So it was Thursday morning... Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday went by quickly (as when you have lots of fun), and Thursday morning I met Tewfic, Chris, and Adam at the Mother's Monument, where people were protesting naked.

Peasants and fishermen from the Mexican state Veracruz were removed from their lands. Eventually, the local government seized these lands without providing the original owners any type of restitution. Since the local government was not opening any channel for communication, the peasants and fishermen brought their families to Mexico City to obtain an answer to their situation.

Their marching and dancing naked is a symbol of the fact that without lands they do not have anything; not even clothes.

This is one of the first times I've photographed public manifestations up close and personal.

I met a really cool guy called Pedro who guided me around. He had a cool sense of humour... which made me wonder how much humour I'd have if I were protesting against the government.

Well... never mind.

So Thursday Morning I met with the Multimedia Storytelling guys, and shot this. Later during the PJ Bootcamp class, I decided I wanted this to be my project (originally it was supposed to be low-level cantinas, but the window for that project was killer for waking up early for class).

I did not like any of the pictures I took in the morning.

It felt good to see the whole material on the big screens. The colors sucked, but the atmosphere in the auditorium was cool.

My favorite panel was the one with Stanley, Khadir, Scott, and David (from NatGeo), and the discussion about the future of photojournalism.

And that was it for Foundry 2008.

I spent the rest of the time with my family, and was quite happy about it.

Too bad couldn't go out to dinner the three of us, but well... there will be other times.

Better times, hopefully.

Mexico City's airport has seen me many times in these past years. With lots of luggage, with only a backpack and a camera, exhausted from intercontinental flights, but this time was weird. I had this strange satisfaction you only have when things go perfectly sweet, and there's no way someone on Earth can take that from you.

... a small realization, maybe.

They sky on my way back just gave me a pretty good image to close this chapter down... youth, dreams, and good times... here and far.

Hope life catches you well.

J

For now, I have my very own Mexico City entry waiting...

It's far from finished, but well... ya know... Photoshop takes some time... particularly with .NEF's.

It's veeeeery simple to pop your Leopard DVD and just click away "next" or "continue" and voilà... OS X 10.5 for the masses.

And what if for some strange reason the laptop won't read the DVD as startup disk?

When life is not that simple, you can just use a Mac Pro as brain for the smaller, less powerful laptop.

You might even need to end up doing this:



Yes... a huuuge Mac Pro used as a vile Target Disk. That's a very expensive external FireWire disk.

And so, I had to play around with dmg's, open firmware, and single user sessions (sooo in looove with the dark screen, and console appearance)... to finally get HERE:



And just like in American Beauty... I yelled: "I RULE".

Now... after about 35k lines of installation log... here are some useful tips I found. In fact, this is much more for me than you... so I remember stuff. If you couldn't care less... skip to the bottom of the separator...

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• I hated the glossy dock... so I changed it. Since ObjectDock just won't work (haven't looked for it yet), I found a cool console command:
  

  defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
  
  killall Dock

• I also like to know where I am placed every instant I look to the toolbar, so I want to see a full path à la windows:
  

  defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

  ...ah yes... I am in /Developer/Applications/Utilities... that's why the regular system utilities are not here.
  
  Now I get it.
• Front Row. Yes! Awesome idea, Cupertino. But... if I don't have a remote how can I access it?
  
  Simple:
  

  Command + Esc

Thanks to D.W. Hoard at CalTech for his lovely site with OS X tips. You can learn how to change the login shell, and other practical stuff there.

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I'm off for now... I've been having a headache today, and have still many photos to go through.

Hope life catches you well.

J

I was havig some troubles with a WinXP machine at work.

I could not see hidden files, even after activating them in options.

So I had to go to the registry editor and do the following:

Find: HKLM-Software-Microsoft-Windows-CurrentVersion-Explorer-Advanced-Folder-Hidden-SHOWALL

then DELETE the value CheckedValue in the right window. (Its type should be REG_SZ and data should be 2.)

Finally create a new DWORD value called CheckedValue (same as above, except that the type is REG_DWORD). Modify the value data to 1 (0x00000001)..

Voilà.