My Life With the iPhone

So far I've made a gazillion bad images with the iPhone. It is so easy to play with the apps, especially ones like Hipstamatic and Instamatic. Then you can download other apps that are just cameras or you can use a ton of photoshop-type apps on an image. It is fun. I think I must be addicted to playing with all the photo apps like some people are with playing Angry Birds on the iPhone.

A few days ago I started to play with a new "camera" in the Hipstamatic application and it has been leading me in an interesting direction, small still lifes in my home. The iPhone is perfect for this. So many times I see a still life but the big girl camera is upstairs and I'm downstairs. The iPhone is always with me. I don't have to think, can I stop what I'm doing and go get the big camera. I just pull out the iPhone and snap.

I'm so easy to entertain these days....as long as I have my iPhone.

Our Lord of the Conquest II

I wrote about El Señor de la Conquista last March. None of that celebration has changed except maybe it is bigger than last year. We heard the drumming throughout the day and last night we went into town for dinner and a walk around the Jardin. Just as we stepped out of the restaurant we were greeted by this troup of dancers heading away from the Jardin. It was dark. they were backlit and moving. I raised the camera and hit the shutter button. I am not sure how much I like the blurry image but I think as a stand alone image it does have a mysterious quality.

After the dancers passed us, we walked into the Jardin, stopped at the ice cream store and then sat on a bench eating our ice cream and watching everything that was going on around us. The Jardin was packed, the streets still had drummers and dancers and all along the edge of the Jardin were food stands doing a good business. It was a blaze of color, smells, sounds and swirls of Mexican people. I hope the thrill of being in San Miguel never goes away.

Getting an FM3 Is Easier and Easier

It is that time of year again. Time to renew my FM3 which allows me to live in San Miguel de Allende. It is getting easier and easier. On Monday morning we went to the the building you see at the top, El Escritorio Publico which is across the street from th Instituto Nacional de Migración. All I had to take was my passport and my current FM3 card. They took my picture. Asked me some questions so they could type up the paperwork and then gave me the paper to take to the bank to pay the fee for the Mexican Government.

We left the Escrito, got back in the car and drove to the Bank. Now this was the one hitch we had in the whole procedure. The bank we went to no longer collected these funds for the Mexican Government, so we had to drive to another Bank across the street. There wasn't a line and it didn't take but a few minutes to pay the fee.

Back on the Libramiento, the San Miguel beltway, to the Escritorio. He had all our papers typed up. I signed in three places. He put the papers in a folder. We walked across the street to the Migración office, took a number and sat down to wait our turn. The wait was the longest delay but there were two people sitting at the desk who brought in stacks of renewal forms for those Gringos who hire someone else to do this job for them. When it was our turn we went to the desk, turned in our paper and we were out of there...beginning to end....in about 2 hours.

Migración had given us a receipt for the papers and they said we could follow the progress on line at such and such address but our new FM3 card would be ready today....just one day after reapplying. Sure enough, Ned checked on line for it this morning and it was ready.

The immigration laws have changed in Mexico but they are not fully implemented. We had heard that after two years with an FM2 you "might" be eligible for Permanente Inmigrado status. We asked the officer who was helping us. He said that yes, the law had changed but they did not know how it would be implemented and under some circumstances you could apply for Permanente Inmigrado status after 2 years with an FM2 but he had no idea what those circumstances would be. Maybe next year at this time it will be settled and I'll start on the way to becoming a Permanente Inmigrado in Mexico.

The Wrong Way

What you see above is the corner of Refugio and Orizaba. Refugio is, of course, on the left side of the image and although not marked with a street name, the other street to the right is Orizaba. For as long as we have been coming to San Miguel de Allende, Calle Orizaba has been a two-way street. And Refugio has been a two way street. But yesterday we had a surprise. We came up the two-way street Refugio and turned left at Orizaba. As we turned I saw a man pointing at the arrow and shaking his head NO! I asked Ned, "Have they made this a one way street?"

At the next corner we saw another arrow indicating that we were going the wrong way on Orizaba. We managed to get off Orizaba on to a side street to go where we needed to go but all we could talk about was what had happened. Orizaba is a main street into Colonia San Antonio. It has always been a little difficult to navigate because cars park along it and so when some one is coming in the opposite direction you have to dodge into a place where cars are not parked. It is a little like playing chicken to see which driver is going to give way. But that is normal in San Miguel de Allende.

We wondered when it happened. When had they painted the arrows on the walls. We had been out the day before and didn't see them. I had walked to yoga earlier yesterday and didn't see them. How are you suppose to know these things. We decided that probably all our Mexican neighbors knew. Maybe it had been on the Mexican radio station or local TV channel. It must just be us gringos who are in the dark.

Today Ned had a transaction at the bank and he was talking to the woman who always helps us. She lives just a couple of streets from us in our Colonia. He asked her about the change making Orizaba a one-way street. What? She hadn't seen the sign, she had not heard about the change, she didn't know anything about Orizaba becoming a one-way street.

We felt better. We were in the dark just like the Mexicans.

The Weather

Rain and more rain. That is what it has done ever since we arrived back in San Miguel on Thursday. This was taken just about an hour ago when I took Carly for a walk . . . in the rain, of course. Behind those houses at the end of the street we should be seeing the mountains that surround San Miguel but instead all we can see are the low hanging clouds. It is chilly too. The weatherman is saying it could be Tuesday before we get a break.

Last night we ordered Chinese food delivery rather than venture out. Tonight, we still don't want to go out so I had to get something in the pantry. I had some chicken breasts in the freezer and planned to walk down to the mercado to get something to go with it. I got bundled up during a lull in the rain but by the time I opened the door to step out . . . you guessed it, rain again. So we went to the tienda on the corner hoping that they might have some veggie to go with the chicken. They had some carrots, tomato, onion and cucumber. Yea! I can make a meal with that.

Bookmaking

Last month I made a couple of books. Not serious books but just testing the waters. Blurb has come out with a plug-in for Adobe Lightroom 3 and even better the Adobe Lightroom 4 Beta has a module that connects directly with Blurb. I won't go into all the details about how it all works but I'll just say it makes the bookmaking process even easier. Not cheaper but easier.

The first book is a notebook. I dropped in about 14 images along with about 100 lined pages to write on. I like to have a little notebook around that I can take to doctor's visits, to jot down some trivia that I don't want to lose....stuff like that. This book has black and white images and the images look better than I expected on the matte paper. However, I would definitely change the text on the cover.

The images for the second book, A January Walk Along Buffalo Bayou, was made with the iPhone one day when I went for a walk along Buffalo Bayou in Houston. They are pretty much just straight images. It is a tiny book, 7x7 inches, 14 pages, 28 images, softcover. I didn't do any of the things I know to do to color manage the printing and yet it is really, really close to what I see on my monitor....and the images were made with the iPhone 4s. The camera on that phone surprises me!

Blurb's business model, and maybe the business model of most other print-on-demand publishers is interesting. They don't actually print the book, they subcontract it out. If I order a book today it might come from a printer in Chicago and if I order another one next week it could come from a printer in Portland. If Blurb keeps all their subcontractors on a tight leash with color management, the photographer may never know the difference. Take a look behind the scenes at a Blurb book being printed.

It is pretty amazing that I can order just one copy of a book. And there is a level of vanity that kicks in when you hold a book in your hand for which you did the photographs, editing, sequencing, and design. Yes, I felt a little bit of vanity until I looked back at some other Blurb photography books. I'm still a novice bookmaker.

If you want to see these two books
2012 Notebook
A January Walk Along Buffalo Bayou

You Do Not Meet the Qualifying Criteria

I know it has only been a month since I turned 75 but does being 75 years old put some mark on your forehead that says OLD in the United States.

We are in Houston for some medical stuff. It seems like ever since we got out of immigration we have been treated differently. When we boarded the bus to go the central car rental place the driver jumped out to help us with our luggage. That wasn't so different but when we arrived at the car terminal by the time we stood up the driver was at my elbow, past all the other people in the front of the bus, to help us. We were sitting right by our luggage and we could easily have gotten it and stepped off the bus. No, no. He took my elbow and help me and then Ned step down off the bus and then handed us our luggage. Okay....so that is his job but it just seemed a  little over the top. I've had the driver help me before but this just seemed different.

We did the paperwork for the car and headed out to the parking area to find it. In Houston there is a two level garage for all the car rental agencies. Just as we stepped out the door we looked at the signs to see which level our car rental agency was on. A man who came out right behind us stopped to ask if he could help us. If he had had a car rental logo on his shirt that would have been one thing but he was just another person going out to get his rental car. Okay.....so why did he stop to help us? Did we really look that lost?

There were several other instances of people jumping in to help. Enough so, that Ned and I were laughing about it. Then came the incident with Best Buy.

I bought my iPhone from Best Buy and the person helping me was very knowledgeable and very nice. So when they sent an email asking me to participate in a survey because I was a recent customer, I clicked okay even though I don't usually do surveys. The first question they asked was, How old are you? I clicked 75. The next thing that pops up on the screen is: Thank you for your willingness to take part. Unfortunately you do not meet the qualifying criteria on this occasion. Thank you for your time. Seventy-five years old is too damn old for Best Buy to be interested in my experience in their store. Man, that is cold, really cold.

Yesterday I had a colonoscopy. Yuck! After it was over, the doctor said everything looked okay and no polyps so unless I had a problem, I didn't need to schedule another colonoscopy since I was 75. So what gives? If you are over 75 you will probably die of something else before you would colon cancer? On the other hand I had already told Ned that I wasn't going to go through the prep for a colonoscopy ever again.

Maybe I just need to change my attitude. If having an OLD sign on my forehead means I don't have to have any more colonoscopies and makes the younger people run around and do things for me, I should just just sit back and enjoy old age.