La RutaInka ended in the accent Mayan city of Tikal and of course I was really pumped to get to see this fascinating place. The day we got to Tikal we decided not to go in till the next day since we had arrived late and wouldn't have that much time to explore. I was told for 50 bucks I could get snuck into the park before they opened and see the sunrise from the highest temple. That night we camped right outside and there was a down pour, I thought it wouldn't of been worth it to go in for the sunrise since you probably wont be able to see much, but I did swear to my self to go back and see the sunrise.
The next day some friends and I got a group together, got a tour guild, and started our hike into the jungle to get to the temples. As soon as we started walking the tour guild told us that everything we saw when Tikal was at it's prime had no trees at all and was just building after building like NYC. As you hiked you could see a hill after a hill after a hill and a nicely made rode between them, this is because each of them hills are temples/buildings under all the dirt.
You can't image the size of the largest temples until you see them in person. Just image hiking on a trail threw the jungle and then getting to a clearing wheres there's a stone wall and you look up and you just can see any end to it. There are only a few temples you can go up on but the climb up them is quit an adventurer it's self and then the climb down scares the shit out of you. The steps you use to go up are straight up into the air, they're more like a ladder then steps. The average height of the temples are about 20 floors high, so just imagine climbing up the side of a 20 floor building on a ladder and then when you get to the top there aren't any railings and then you have to climb back down that ladder.
The hypothesis why Tikal was abandoned is that all the trees you see below were all cut down by the Mayans to build temples and buildings. So because they had cut all the trees down area dried out and it was uninhabitable. What blows my mind is the fact that 100s of years later Mother Natural has taken this area back and you can barley see the huge city that was once there.
The image below was taken from same spot that was used for Star Wars. I've post a clip below from the film so you can compare.
If you zoom in to a small section of the middle of the left side in the image above you find these two little guys below. Tikal is a real jungle and there are no cages at all, the animals are in the wild and roaming freely.
I'm a huge Patriots fan and when I seen this lady, with a Pats hat, in Tikal, the middle of a jungle, you best believe I was pumped. It was just great benign able to be at the NYC of the ancient world and then seeing another Pats fan there what more could I ask for.
A few weeks ago I got a call from James Diossa, a high school friend that is now a Central Falls councilman. He called me telling to get my gear ready and that he was going to pick me up because he needed me to photograph a radio interview at Latino Public Radio with Jorge Munoz.
Jorge Munoz is a school bus driver form Queens, NY and after work he makes food and then parks on Roosevelt Ave. in Queens to give out food to people that are hungry. He's been has benign doing this since 2005 and recently Obama honored Jorge with the Presidential Citizens Medal. It was great honer to have been able to have met Jorge, you should check out the video below and the his web site to learn more about him and the great help he does.
A couple of months ago I shot the last Providence College home game vs Rutgers and I posted the images on myFacebook page. I also friend requested the PC players and then tagged them on my shots. Threw out the next week I was getting notices that people were using my images as their profile pictures, when I check who it was it was the PC players, I guess they liked them. (To check out more images form this game click here.)
When I was in Guatemala I had a chance to stay a few days in Antigua. Antigua was on of the first cities in the Americas built by the Spanish. I really didn't like it that much, it looked really old on the outside but when you really walked around you can seen it was kind of fake. The buildings look really old on the outside but when you walk inside they look like boutiques you would see on south beach. It felt like a movie set or like going to Disney Land but it does has tons of history and thats what makes it worth visit.
Like I said there's tons of history in Antigua, you can just see it in the architecture. There are tons of churches all around the city and the one below stood out to me. The Spanish would have the Mayan people build the churches and at this church they had them make grapes for the outside design. But instead of making grapes the Mayan they made the design look like corn, that is very important to the Mayan culture.
Also in Antigua there is on of the top Jade factories in the world, La Casa del Jade. Jade is a precious rock that is used for jewelry. Jade was a very important item to the Mayans, that the kings wore all over their bodies and even placed them on their teeth to show their power.
Last week I ordered some new equipment from Midwest Photo Exchange and you all know as soon as it came in the mail I just had to play with my new toys. I ordered a LumoPro Umbrella Swivel, LumoPro Studio Clamp w/ Double Stud, and Cactus V4 Radio Slave Set. I got all this equipment to use with my Canon 580EX II Speedlites so I would have a smaller and lighter strobe kit to use when I'm just walking around the city or out with friends.
I went into my grandmothers room and set up my speedlite with a 1/2 CTO gel on the door with the clamp and umbrella swivel and pointed it toward my grandmother's face. My grandmother has a lamp on her night stand I wanted to simulate that light with the angle the light was pointing at her from and the warmth of the gel. At the end of the post is a shot of the setup.
I liked the look but I wanted to make the image more moody, more dramtic. So I taped a Profoto 5° Grid on the speedlite to spot the light on to her face.
I was losing to much of the detail in the shadows and to fix that I added another speedlite on camra as a fill light. I also added another 1/2 CTO gel on the speelite on the door and set the color balance on my camra to tungsten. This makes the light on the door have the warmth I want and the fill light turn blue, this simulate a lamp lighting her face and a tv filling in the rest of the room with light.
