I really like this shot, everyone in the shot is doing some sort of action. And that is exactly what these buildings at Plaza de San Fernando looks like, it is like Fujichrome Velvia was applied to the whole city!
“You don’t make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.”
I couldn’t figure out how to open this blog post, so I am just quoting Mean Streets! Mexico seems to primarily be featured in the news whenever there are drug related stories in actual mean streets. Guanajuato could not be any further from that. We were met with a wonderful peaceful, welcoming and happy attitude and felt completely safe walking the streets day and night. No one seemed to care either that we were taking pictures all the time. This city truly is a special haven in the universe, truly wonderful and no one place in the last many years has affected me like this and made me feel at home. I cannot wait till we return.
Street photography. I can point my camera at a street, but that is about the extent of my street photography skills! I am one extremely lucky potato though, that Charlene is a brilliant street photographer (check out her streets and shadow portfolio!) so I get to observe her at work and try to learn from her. She has an excellent eye for making magic out of some chaotic random street scene and I constantly find myself going “what are you looking at?” and then I see the result and see that once again she has used her 35mm lens (the crop sensor equivalent of the classic 50mm) and carved out a perfect slice of life in a composition that no one else would have come up with.
Walking the streets together, inevitably we sometimes end up with just about the same image, mostly because sometimes I cannot resist copying the master! My view of the streets is quite different though, I do tend to use my 18mm almost all the time. That is how I see the world: wide-eyed and wide-angled (and sometimes widely-confused!).
I can spot a great music photography opportunity blindfolded but I doubt my eye will ever get especially tuned towards street photography. In a place like Guanajuato though I really enjoyed it, playing with the colours, the light and shadows was fantastic. What follows is a selection of some of my street shots from Guanajuato. If any one of these came out ok, it is purely because I have a great teacher!
All images shot on my trusty old Fujifilm X-T1, most of them with the Fujinon 18mm lens, my favourite lens for the streets.
We spent many afternoons at the Plaza de San Fernando, enjoying whatever happened on that day and how the light and shadows interacted with everything. This musician was one of the best we heard there.
Blazing sun and deep shadows. The streets are narrow, the buildings are colourful, I have never been a place where one gets so many chances to play with light, shadow and colours.
The Regional Museum of Guanajuato Alhóndiga de Granaditas makes for one very nice background at night.
This was such a cool evening. There was a big street party on the street next to us, and there was a great live band pumping out some cumbia beats! The street was the scene of lots of food stands and dancing. The “woman” is a guy in a costume, there is also a guy in a bull costume in the lower right corner!
The small pedestrians-dogs-and-donkeys only streets are called Callejons – this is right outside our home in Guanajuato.
Most of the days in Guanajuato were sunny and sometimes quite warm, but for a few days we got massive storms and snow! Here’s a few musicians on the way to work under a dark sky.
Charlene uses her super powers and perfectly times a photo bomb with my award winning shot of the Basilica!
Charlene, The Magic One in one of the callejons at night
This street corner near the post office proved to be a great spot late in the afternoon. The sun in Guanajuato literally slices a place like this in two.
The Star next to a star!
Painting houses in Guanajuato brings it’s own special challenges at times!
At night the city transforms into another movie set, no ugly street lights anywhere.
The Magic One on the red carpet, well red wall at least!
Street photographers need fuel! In this case some Mezcales shots to fuel the next masterpieces.