To the Front

Subscribe in a reader

Wednesday 30 January 2008

spidernews

The Mondo Spider was on the Discovery Channel. And I have no way to watch it, as apparently if your IP is from Colombia you don't get to use that online service. I damned well hope it's still working when I get back, though. In the meantime, the eatART opening is this Friday. http://www.eatart.org/ has some contact info if you want to go. Hint: you want to go.

Saturday 5 January 2008

More photomabos.

In Tsuraku, parrots were the only non-bug wildlife we saw (that I can recall, at least). Then we found out that they were vaguely tame and regularly fed by the neighbours. parrot The other parrot that the neighbours sometimes fed. I'm really sad, I messed up the field of focus on this. I thought I'd focussed on his head, but I guess the camera refocussed afterwards, so... not bad when it's not at 100%, but not amazing. parrot Hiking down from one of the Banos miradors, I interrupted these two, and got a little voyeuristic. bugs On the coast of Ecuador there's a national park called Machililla. I rented a bike and headed there from the nearest town, down this road: tunnel There's an archaeological reserve in the park called Agua Blanca. It's not terribly amazing, but there were about a hundred goats crossing the road to there. goats more goats I like rocks. (On the beach in Machalilla.) rocks This cactus seems to grow all over the place randomly. This shot was taken in Machalilla, but two days ago I was walking with some friends along a river in Colombia and we came across one with a deep red fruit on it. We plucked and ate it, and it was rich and delicious. Also, it was covered in tiny pointy needles, which were somewhat less tasty and somewhat more painful. cactus A shot from a cliffside walk in Machalilla: scenery More scenery from Machalilla: more scenery I'm really choked about this shot. I'd been shooting birds, and thought I'd left the aperture at a setting which I clearly hadn't left it at. This was shot wide-open. At f8.0 or f11 this would've been a great shot. Damnit! hut It's hard to tell (since I can't post-prod it) but this crab was practically glowing it was coloured such a bright and vivid orange. crab More pufferfish shots from the Ruta del Sol. Check out his nasty looking teeth, especially: pufferfish pufferfish Ruta del Sol barnacles: barnacles There were a LOT of birds on Ecuador's coast. A bunch did this weird, oscillating dive where it looked like they turned into skip ropes being twitched. I'll put a video up eventually and you'll see what I mean. There were also pelicans, and islands. pelican and islands Wreckage! busted This boat fascinated me. I haven't seen many wrecked boats outside of Nova Scotia. unlistless More wreckage: nails More boat: abandoned This washed up one night when we were in the super touristy surf town of MontaƱita. It had more meat, but the vultures got to it. Note the egg by it's head. The turtle was probably killed by local dogs, and the eggs were mostly dug up by crabs after dogs opened the hole. dead turtle turtlehead turtle turtle good night These guys were getting dressed outside a museum in Guayaquil. I asked this one, and she was delighted to have her picture taken. The group is called Circus Taller, which in Spanish means Circus Workshop. clown Monkey. Need I say more? Monkey! A fertility charm very similar to the rightmost one in this collection was part of the inspiration for the graf piece. fertility charms Carvings of shamanic figures vary wildly across S. American cultures. Some are anthropomorphic, some are humans with animalistic features, some are just strangely styled. I liked this one, particularly. shaman When we came out of the museum, the clowns rounded a corner and we walked right into them. They grabbed Em and started dancing with her, and I threw my camera in my bag (wish I'd snapped one of Em with them first!) and jumped into the fray. After a bit we extracted ourselves and I started snapping. In hindsight, I should've been shooting at ISO 200, since though it was a bright day and I needed at least a shutter speed of 1/200 to keep things crisp, a bit more depth of field would've been nice in many of these. clown reach emote emote emote, that's all I do One of my faves: shake it little drummer clowns This guy got dragged in the same way Em did, but after a bit of protest he got pretty into it: participation roped in So cute! kawaii... in Guayaquil? Here's most of Circus Taller (which translates to Circus Workshop), though the backdrop sucks. They didn't want to move, understandably, but they wanted a group shot. Funnily enough, afterwards I was packing my bag and chatting with Em, and this little kid comes up and asks for a photo with her. Not with the clowns, jesters, drummers and stiltwalkers who are a few metres away. No, with Emily. group shot Aaaand that's the 38 pics I get to upload to Flickr this month. And it's only the 5th or so. But hey, highspeed and a major city. Love ya, miss ya, and stay healthy.