filipino reprints

san fernando, pampangas, philippines

for the past few years, before i go away for my holy week trip, i reprint images from the holy week four years prior. the main reason is my printing skills have become better. i would like to think i've become a better editor and can catch images that i missed.

a good two-thirds of my reprints overlap the original edit. it gives some validation to the images i selected the first time around.

above is from four years ago in the philippines. i had lots of whipping shots. but originally i didn't notice to two figure on either side. so this was one of the images that made it into this group of edits.

(Printed in 2005; Just printed)

even though it caught my eye this time, it might not make my complete project edit. that is down to about 50 images over the last seven years of work. ultimately, i have stronger images from that day that just fit more easily in the series.

it is nice to know it is there.

this routine may prove to be a problem next year as i have over 150 work prints from seville in 2006.

timor aid

i got this in the mail this morning.

this is absolutely the most moving postcard front i have ever received. it is by the australian photographer jon lewis and it goes towards the OMT women's organisation of east timor. k-livealittle sent it to me on a recent weekend there.

i should shoot for ngos.

flashback: march 24, 1998

san jose, costa rica

eleven years ago today was a landmark day, i truly opened my eyes that day. it was the first time that i had traveled abroad. the dot-com newspaper conglolmerate disbanded the company i was working for and i had a little break in work from the other dot-com start-up i was working for.

at the same time, g-thefamilyc had submitted his resignation to bvideo, along with his worker manifesto.

we decided to touch down to costa rica. he had heard great things about it. i was still wet under the ears and had never flown internationally in my adult live.

at that time, g-thefamilyc was already a seasoned traveler. spanning only one week long, the memories filled up my head to the point of near explosion. i still can close my eyes and imagine the rainforest and the beaches.

it got me hooked unto the travel. i still travel for the feeling of coming home to close my eyes and get carried away. eleven years later, i've been to six continents, forty-five countries and countless airports. it seems ever three to four months i'm away.

the above picture doesn't look like much. it just a street in san jose near our hotel, but it was one of the first i took abroad. then i packed just two disposable 35mm cameras. in someways i envy that past.

in two weeks, i go away again. and i have to decide whether to bring a medium format slr with 2 lenses with a 35mm rangefinder 2 more lenses and a point & shoot; or four 35mm cameras (2 rangefinders, one slr, one point & shoot) with 5 lenses. either case i will be packing about 120 rolls of film.

photography gives me a chance to not be that jaded traveler and keep my eyes open towards enlightenment.

flashback: march 17, 2008

segasta, sicily, italy.

a year ago, k-livealittle texted me. "it's saint patricks day, listen to your favorite u2 song." being in italy for a month i had forgotten about it, i put my earphones on and played 'one' on my audio recorder. i then texted k-cork a happy saint paddies day.

this day was the calm within the storm. the previous day i spent in marsala photographing a palm sunday procession. i followed that up by returning to trapani visiting churches getting ready for the rest of holy week. from tuesday on, i would not have a full night of sleep until easter sunday night.

e-bazan stopped by with his holy week workshop students. i had met him four months earlier in oaxaca mexico during day of the dead. for the rest of the week, i would be running into his class all the time.

segasta was pretty. the spring flowers were in bloom. instead of taking the two euro bus up to the ruins, i hiked it. i got to breath in the fresh air.

now my thoughts go to ethiopia. the time between palm sunday and holy thursday may be spent hiking through the countryside with an ngo.

access denied

right now the apple store is the closest thing i have to internet access. that's where this post originates from.

i've lost internet access at home. for weeks, months even there hasn't been a wifi point i could jump off of.

the netzero on my home computer won't load. and i can't reinstall it so that means i have to reinstall the full computer. it seems such a bother especially since i can feel the hard drive dying on me. everything is based off of G-thefamilyc's computer he built in 1998. with a few harddrives added on.

so this is the call for another computer, if you have anything newer than a 400mhz machine that you want to get rid of. i'm taking it.

failing that, i'll probably reconstruct the box when i get back from ethiopia in may.

flashback: march 10, 2007

i've got a fascination with photographing balloons i recently discovered.

from march 9th of last year...

i booked my flight today

ethiopia here i come. april 7th to may 5th.

booking a flight isn't as it seems for me. for most new yorker's there is a direct flight to anywhere they want to go. this works out for places like london, paris, rome, cairo even delhi, hong kong and beijing. it isn't even that complicated to get to sydney because qantas plans good connections via lax.

going to ethiopia is a different story. no direct flights, all the options seem to involve getting into addis ababa at midnight, transfering three times, or taking a twelve hour lay over.

coupled that with i still photograph with film and airport x-rays damage film. the airport p.r. line is that it is safe for film up to iso 800. but what they don't mention is the effect is cumulative, so the more often i go through an xray scanner the odds increase that my images will be damaged. in addition, i think iso 3200 film is god's gift to mankind and a third of my film is shot with that.

heathrow and charles de gaulle have been notorious for not allowing anything not to be hand checked. on a transfer to seville a few years ago i spent the majority of my five hour layover talking up and down the security ranks.

going through kayak and the other discount airfare sites, i needed to check every connection. how long would i be laying over and is the security reasonable for photographers.

i wouldn't mind getting off at heathrow for 12 hour to have a few pints with friends or 14 hours to spend an afternoon and early evening in paris. those were closed off to me.

what remained was an overnight in dubai, 12 hours in rome, 9 hours in turkey -- they xrayed my film last time i was in istanbul, 10 hours in cairo.

the prospects were grim until i found a three hour layover in frankfurt. from memory in 2005, the airport is laid out so that international transfers don't go through security again. it was only a four hour layover so i would stay air side. unfortunately i get into addis ababa in the evening.

i am in talks to try to borrow a pair of "xray-proof" lead lined bags. i normally do not travel with them. they seem to be simply too heavy and annoying to carry around. a photographer who regularly goes to ethiopia uses them because most of the better hotels have xray machines. i'm not sure if i'll frequent those establishments, but better to be prepared.

talking to some other film photographers i was told we don't really fly -- we technically are world wide couriers for film.

flashback: march 3, 2002

this is the first class i t.a.ed at icp. new york at night weekend workshop. i'm not sure if my pictures have gotten much better since, i just take alot more of them.

spring forward

it's time to think about spring.

my laptop has the yankees/astros game going. what threw me for a loop was the announcers saying that this weekend starts daylight savings time. so the change of seasons is closer than the seven inches of snow leads me to believe.