Do I Really Want to Make a Blurb Book?

I've been doing one of the things I do best, Procrastinating. What I really want to do is make a Blurb book using some of my Holga images. So yesterday that was my plan for the day. But when I got into my digital files, I decided that the only way, absolutely the only way, for me to do this was to spend time adding keywords to the digital files. That way I could pull all of the Holga images up to look at them and decide which ones would go into the book. That took most of the day because I kept just peeping in a few other files just to see what they were.

That is how you are getting the image above. It was from February 26, 2007 and I was walking into town from the house in San Miguel . . . just shooting anything that caught my fancy. I don't think I ever did a thing with any of the images from that day but yesterday I had to stop and process this image. I liked the soft colors and the contrast of the yellow-green leaves. If I didn't do it right then, I might forget about it. That would be a shame. This image needed to be seen. Okay, so I processed it, even printed it. It makes a nice print. Now you are seeing it in the blog.

You see where this is leading . . . yes, you are right. Not one single image got dropped into Blurb's BookSmart template on Saturday.

Now it is Sunday and it is after 4:00 PM and still nothing has been dropped into a template. This morning I had to watch Sunday Morning News first thing. Then I needed to vacuum the floors and mop the kitchen and bathrooms. After that I felt so grimy I needed a shower. A friend stopped by to bring us some fresh produce from her garden. Then I needed a little nap.

What am I doing now? You got it. Writing a blog. Still not a single image has gone into the template for the book. I could write another whole blog on why I procrastinate. Oh wait, I think I've written about that before . . . here.

San Antonio Festival

This weekend is the Festival for our Colonia Church. Yesterday I walked over to the church and sat while parishioners came in to pray. The church was loaded with flowers. It was peaceful.

Today the inside of the church may look the same but outside is anything but peaceful. There are castillos being loaded, bands playing, and the plaza in front of the church is packed with families, food stands and people dressed in costumes for the Locos Parade which began right after the outside Mass. The Locos Parade has grown so much in the last 13 or 14 years that we have been going to it. Now it starts way out Ancha de San Antonio and winds it way through town. It looks to me like one-fourth of the town is in the parade and the other three-fourths of the town are lined up on the streets to watch and try to catch candy that is thrown to the crowd. In some ways you might say it is a family Mardi Gras.

If you want to see some more pictures of the Locos click here.

I Missed Good Friday

Yesterday I kept thinking about Good Friday in San Miguel. I was missing not just Good Friday but all the San Miguel rituals around Easter. Yes, it is Easter here too but about all that exists to remind you of Easter are colored Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies. Oh, and grocery store advertisments about food for Sunday.

Since I wasn't there to photograph the procession in Colonia San Antonio for Good Friday, I started looking back through my files at what I had photographed in prior years. When I got to 2007, I stopped. I had almost 100 images from that Good Friday and none of them had been processed. I don't know what happened that year but for some reason they have just been sitting there. I worked on them in Lightroom and put some of them in a gallery if you'd like to go see them.

Viernes de Dolores

Tonight I will be missing Viernes de Dolores in my Colonia in San Miguel. Many homes will build an altar around an image of the Virgen and they will open their door to those who would like to share this night. The night commemorates the sorrow of Mary but you can not visit these altars without remembering the sorrow of all mothers who have lived through losing a child, even a grown child, or having to watch them stray off the right path.

If you wish you can read more about this beautiful night. I've blogged about Viernes de Dolores before here and here and here.

This image was made last year. I had just made another image of this altar without any people in it. Then I saw the shoe on the left and the little boy walked into the right-hand side. I hit the shutter button. What I had not seen until I downloaded the file was the little face looking under the curtain on the left. At first I thought that the image without the boy was the best of the two but one of the things that photographers find is that it is a good thing to give some time between making images and choosing and finishing images. Now I think this is the better image. I've printed this image large on 17x22 paper. You really see a lot more in the print than you do on the monitor.

Night in Colonia San Antonio #1

The apartment across the street from us. I made this image while I was waiting for the full moon to come up the other night.

Super Full Moon

I'm sure that there are millions of shots of the moon last night since it was the fullest it has been in 20 years. This one is one of mine of the moon coming up over the mountains of San Miguel de Allende. I don't have the right equipment for moon shots. This was the most I could get out of my longest lens. I guess it is the thrill of the "hunt" that keeps me taking these moon shots.