Colombia

Canyon road between Pasto and Buesaco

Nariño, Colombia, April 2009

I spent five weeks in Colombia, working with a coffee farming cooperative to develop agro-tourism for their villages. It was an incredible opportunity, to be with genuine people living and really enjoying rural agricultural lives, and also to capture the incredible scenery, faces, and sustainable farming practices. I met several who, after spending some time in Colombia's cities, moved back to the tiny pueblo of San José de Alban because they much preferred that lifestyle. And unlike a great number of agricultural areas, there's a thriving economy that means young people have livelihoods to look forward to. Not only is there coffee trading, well organized by small-farm cooperative and taking steps towards organic and fair-trade certification, there's also artisan-made textiles from a locally grown and processed fiber called cabuya. While coffee and cabuya allow San Jose to tap into international markets, there's plenty of land used to grow locally consumed food crops, as well as livestock, supporting the community and several restaurants in the town center. I'm sure there's problems there, but to an outsider, it sure seemed like paradise.

Check out the full story at www.cafealban.org

Sufi Music at its finest

Ustad Ghulam Farid Nizami held it down for three hours
last Saturday night. Check out the full set of photos
on Flickr here

This music takes one deep into the soul. The editing of these photos reflects that, I've dramatized each picture and emphasized the dark blues. Visually at first the photos, and the setting, did not seem too deep. Fairly bright indoor lighting, off-white carpeting and window shades, and the stillness inherent in the photograph all contribute to not really expressing the feeling of being in the presence of this inspiring human performance. My hope is that through selection and editing, this photo set does convey some of the magic of what it was like to be there.

Kwai-yin Necklace by Heyoka Merrifield

This is a unique piece by Heyoka Merrifield, who makes sacred art jewelry. This photo is from a series I took with the intent to help my mom sell this piece. You can see the whole series here. It's a beautiful piece. :)

Winter Front/Back Doors

As a Texan, winters in Montreal make me feel so alive and excited sometimes. The briskness of the cold and the shortness of the days feed an energy of quick movements that both keep me warm and get as much as possible accomplished during the few hours of daylight. However, the dominant feeling of winter is a time of hibernation, when the snow piles up all around you like a soft blanket, muffling sounds and assuaging the guilt of the lazy. These photos hopefully capture that feeling, the mercy of being able to sit at home and rest with friends and lovers. Good for warm-weather homes that feel too much excited windy energy flowing through, the low point of view helps reinforce an earthy, grounded feeling.

I like them best side by side. I think a white matte around and between them would work great, though a milk chocolate or sky blue on a bright yellow wall would also be nice.

New Camera! Pentax Optio W10

Bought this camera at B & H last week in prep for a trip to Brazil. Waterproof, dustproof, and wide angle. (Though here I'm actually shooting into the blind spot mirror on a cargo van, while waiting at the border to get back into Canada :)

China: Goat Stowage

This is from the flight from Chicago to Shanghai. I spent a lot of time standing around in the back, annoying the flight attendants and pouring myself more orange juice. After awhile I noticed someone had tampered with this sign. Jake, was that you?

Path around the bend
Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan Province, China, 2007

I've just started looking through my photos from hectic trip I made to China this May. This photo is from a two-day hike through the deepest gorge on the planet. We spent day one on the high road, passing through small villages with farm fields terraced into the mountain side and stopping to eat and sleep at guesthouses that directed travelers via messages painted onto rocks extolling the plentitude of their vegetable gardens, the coldness of their beer, and the warmness of their showers.

On the other side of the gorge the mountain is practically uninhabitated. There is, however, a high road cutting across that seems to mimic the one we traveled. You can see it in the photo above, the thin line to the bottom left. Where does it go? Who takes it? As far as we saw, nowhere and no one.

What makes this gorge measure so tall is the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain whose peaks are hiding behind clouds in this photo. All day the peaks were hidden by clouds, except for about a 20 minute window during which we happened to be at the highest point of our trek. A remarkable coincidence that we made the most of by resting and taking endless amounts of photos. As we sat and watched, we noticed that the mountain seemed to make its own clouds, that white mist rising out of the snow-covered rock puffed up and sat atop the peaks. By the time we started walking again, the mountain tops had again disappeared.