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.

Where Am I?

No, I'm not Over the Rainbow with the Tinman and Dorothy but I am in a magical place . . . San Miguel de Allende. We flew in on Sunday so we were able to go to the Jardin Monday night to join the trick or treaters. I've written so many times about just hanging out in and around the Jardin at night and how it feeds my soul but I'm not the only one who fills that way. I think that is what continues to draw people not to just vacation in San Miguel but to want to live here.

I wish I would have had a tape recorder with me because right after we arrived in the Jardin we ran into D and T who were finishing dinner at a sidewalk cafe and taking it all in, and I do mean all, of the things that were going on in the Jardin. D started talking to me about all the things she was seeing and how this magic just couldn't be replicated. Her soul was being filled as well.

It was so much fun to see all the kids who could run on their own as well as the little guys with Mom and Dad. Most of the kids were having fun except for a few of the little guys who were kind of overwhelmed.

But I think this big kid was having the most fun of all handing out candy.

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.

100 Days

100 Days until Solo Foto Book Month 2011 (SoFoBoMo 2011). Seems like I just finished SoFoBoMo for 2010. For new readers who haven't struggled with me though making a PDF book in 31 days and you are wondering what SoFoBoMo is all about, click here. If you want to take a look back, I've written a lot blog entries about SoFoBoMo.  Here are the books I have completed for SoFoBoMo:
2009: Eastwood Today
2010: New Orleans, Two Nights and Three Days

Basically SoFoBoMo is making a book with at least 35 images in a 31 day contiguous period. This year the rolling time frame is July 1 to August 31. You do the photography, edit, design and finish your book in 31 days. Any one can commit to making a book. There is no competition, no prizes, no winners except from the standpoint that you feel like a winner when your finish you book.

I signed up to do SoFoBoMo this year about a month ago and then I started wondering what in the heck the book would be about this time. All of a sudden this week two ideas popped into my head. It is really funny how when you need something your brain is open to find the information. One of them really has me excited but I need to do some more research before I know if it will work for SoFoBoMo. But even if it will not fit in the time frame for SoFoBoMo it is a project that I want to do anyway. The second idea is one that I want to start photographing right now. I don't want to wait until July. So who knows what will happen in the next 100 days, some other ideas might show up as well. I'm energized and excited.

If you are a photographer and you could use a challenge or a Whack on the Side of the Head, think about signing up for SoFoBoMo 2011. I'm not going to tell you it is easy but you'll have a great time.

Night in Colonia San Antonio #2. The image above is another I shot from the terrace on the night of the full moon. You know you have the camera and the tripod set up and you have to do something while you are waiting for that moon to break the top of the mountains.

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.

Night Lights #17

I am not through with the Christmas lights. There are still more places, lots of places, on my list. Son #1 has said he wants to take me to see some huge light displays that are choreographed for sequences of several minutes. And I'd still like to get to the neighborhoods in Southeast Houston where Ned and I grew up. What surprises me is that I have only seen one nativity scene and I saw it in the daylight so I've got to get back there at night and see if it is lit so I can get you a photograph.

Night Lights #16

Another contemporary home decorated with restraint. A wreath on the door and the plastic-sack luminary lights. I love the simplicity. It goes with the house. I wonder who the architect was for this house. It pays homage to the front porch but it isn't a copy of  a house from the 1920's. I'd like to meet the owners.

Night Lights #15

Merry Modern Minimal or Christmas Contemporary.....whatever you want to call this house. The lights are actually red, green and white but the camera just sees them as the lightest light source in the frame. I like the way one-half is red and warm and the other half is blue and cold.

Night Lights #14

Frosty, the snowman. Trust me, there is no snow on the ground. I don't know how Frosty can look so cheerful in 60-70 degrees.

Night Lights #13

WOW! This month is going by fast and I still have lots of Night Lights I want to photograph. Sometimes when we go out I see places I want to photograph but something about the light isn't right....like they don't have the lights turned on. Here at the River Oaks Shopping Center....the lights were on.

Today Ned is taking his last Chemo treatment and in spite of all the damage from radiation and chemo he is doing really well. The  issue that remains is eating. You never know what might taste good to him. Sometimes even mentioning a food will sound unappetizing to him. Sometimes he thinks something will be good but it doesn't taste good when he starts to eat it. Two things that are his fallback foods are Ensure and canned soups but not all canned soups.

Last year when he took chemo, it was pork that he couldn't abide. This year it is bread. Some of his favorite vegetables, even green salads, have dropped off his list for now as well. However, I know the secret to his stomach on chemo. If he hasn't eaten very well for a day or so, I'll prepare some kind of fried meat, mashed potatoes,cream gravy, and green beans....the fried diet....and he will eat. Maybe even two helpings. He surprised me by eating cold boiled shrimp for lunch one day and pecan pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast another day.

We have good reports from a couple of his doctors. The last MRI showed no signs of tumor. As soon as we can get away after Christmas, we will be back in San Miguel ready to roll.

Night Lights #12

This house was shot in the Old Sixth Ward. The house just glowed with warmth and Christmas cheer.

Night Lights #11

As we drove down a street looking for Christmas lights in Eastwood, I caught just a glimpse of this house on a side street, glowing from the blue icicle lights hanging from the eaves. So strange looking like a blue glow from a space ship in a 1960 science-fiction movie. We circled around the block so I could  photograph it.

Night Lights #10

Last night we went to Eastwood, the neighborhood where we own a lot....just in case we want to build another house someday. I thought that we would see more Christmas lights up than we did. Maybe there will be more after this weekend.  Between the weird colors and the high contrast, these images are hard to process. And just when I think I have them okay, I bring them into Blogger and they change again.

Night Lights #9

Wells Fargo Plaza, Houston, Texas

Night Lights #8

Rockefeller Center doesn't have anything on Houston. Houston has it's own giant tree in front of City Hall.

And while Rockefeller Center has a skating rink in front of their tree, we have a reflection pond. Houston's Christmas ice skating rink is located somewhere else. It is a marvel to me that they can keep ice on that rink since during this time of the year, Houston can have 40 degree weather one day and the next it could be  80 degrees.

Night Lights #7

Another decorated house in the Heights.

Night Lights #6

 We are doing a little decorating for the Holidays and I'm having so much fun because I have to figure out something different to use. We got rid of all our Christmas decorations when we moved to San Miguel full time. There were ornaments that the kids had made, ornaments that had been given to us from relatives, so much stuff that it took at least a seven foot tree to get them all on. So when we were downsizing, we told our sons, come get any of the decorations you want and they did.

There were a few exceptions. I had about five or six manger scenes that I had collected. None of them were antiques or anything like that but I loved them. I kept all of them. Then I had some blown glass balls that #2 had given me and they are so beautiful and I love them so much I couldn't get rid of them. I also had a wooden tree that I attached them to rather than letting them get lost on the tree.  All of that was packed and stored.

We got them out of storage and we bought a little four foot tree. That is when the fun started. All of the accessories I used to decorate before were gone so we made a couple of trips to the crafts store and would you believe that they were already putting the Christmas floral stuff and ribbons on sale at 60% off. Where before I kept doing the same things over and over, now I could start all over and do something new. Much smaller scale of decorating but I had a great time.

Night Lights #5

This is newly refurbished Kirby Drive just off the corner of Richmond.  The city widened the street, put in more turn lanes. I'm not sure who added all the trees along the street, the city or a business district but it looks really nice. Especially with the lights on the trees.

I've been thinking about the blog entry, Night Lights #4 of the store window and you know what I miss? I miss the store windows that were full of toys and Christmas villages and trains that ran through the scene. I certainly remember them when I was a kid and, of course, no Christmas was complete until we had taken the sons to see Foley's Christmas windows and had driven through a neighborhood that had gone all out with their Christmas lights. All this nostalgia makes me want to see The Christmas Story movie again because that was really Christmas.

What will my grandsons remember about Christmas when they are old geezers? It won't be going downtown to see the most amazingly decorated Christmas windows. What a shame.

Night Lights #4

A little change of pace on the Night Light series but it is still about Christmas lights and decorations.

Last night I got Ned to go along with me as my Security Officer. When we were getting ready to leave Carly did her bouncy run through the house that says, "I wanta go, I wanta go. Take me." So we took her along too. I had seen some Christmas lights at a couple of strip shopping centers or Business Districts. I thought I'd feel better with someone watching my backside as I stood looking and adjusting my camera and tripod. Besides when I get in the flow, I really lose track of what is going on around me. We actually only hit a couple of locations but I came away with about 36 digital files, seven of which I processed and three of them are maybe keepers. Three out of 36....that is pretty good for me, especially if even one does turn out to be a keeper.

I kept expecting the shopping centers Security Officers to come up and tell me I couldn't photograph there so I stayed on the public sidewalk. However I had spotted this window and like the way it looked so I had been planning how I wanted to shoot it. Just before we left I walked from the sidewalk to right in front of the window. Plopped the tripod down, shot three exposures and picked up the tripod and walked to the car.

I had thought about how I would handle it if someone did tell us we could not photograph at the shopping centers. No one ever hassled us. I was almost disappointed.

Night Lights #3

While we are here in Houston I am trying to see as many movies as I can. Particularly those that might be in the running for some category of the Academy Awards. I saw Secretariat which was panned by a lot of the critics as being a "Feel Good" movie. What is the matter with being a "Feel Good" movie if it is also a good story, well acted, good photography, wonderful time-piece sets and wardrobe? I don't get it. Does a movie have to be on the darkside to be an Academy Award movie?

Another movie I saw was The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, from the last book in Stieg Larsson's trilogy. I saw the first movie, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo but missed the second one. And, of course, I've read all three books. These movies were made in Sweden and so you have English subtitles. I thought the two movies that I saw were good and kept to the storyline of the books. They felt gritty and raw like the books. I liked them, so of course, the critics panned them. Now Hollywood is going to re-make them. Can Hollywood make them better? Time will tell.

Last night good friends invited us for dinner. They had made a new soup recipe and had bought some tamales from a vendor that they wanted to check out. Simple dinner but we could not have enjoyed it more if it were five-courses. Just goes to remind me that it is the company not the necessarily the food that makes a good evening.

Another Night Lights image at the top. This one is also from the Heights. I'm having a hard time with these images. They look okay in Photoshop or if I view them from one of the Windows image programs but when I add them to Blogspot or Facebook they become darker. They were made in the dark and I want them dark not daylight but I don't want them as dark as Blogspot and Facebook are making them. I'm having to go back and adjust my files. Still they aren't quite right but I hope you enjoy my Night Lights series.