This is my third experiment with Time Lapses, slowly im understanding how to make them smooth, clear and nice looking. The photographs were taken in Tapalpa México, hope you like it.

When i look at this portrait in a more objective way i think is just an ok Photograph. I guess what i like a lot was the place and time when i shoot it. This guy was about to climb a big tree trunk to then jump tied by a rope and spin around, he is a “Volador de papantla” (Papantla Flyer). Check the previous post to know all about this beautiful and brave Mexican tradition.

Los Voladores de Papantla is the mexican tradition i enjoy the most, since a was little i remember myself watching them and feeling scared. The tradition is pre-hispanic and before the conquest the ritual was celebrated in many cultures on the center and south of México until the Spanish prohibited its practice. The ritual survived in few places, the most known is Papantla in Veracruz.

According to Totonac myth, at least 450 years ago there was a severe drought that brought hunger to the people. The gods were withholding the rain because the people had neglected them. The ceremony was created, to appease the gods and bring back the rains. In some versions of the story, the ritual is created by the old men of a village, who then chose five young men who were chaste. In other versions, the five men themselves create the ritual. The tallest tree in the nearby forest is cut down, with the permission of the mountain god, stripped of branches and dragged to the village. The trunk is erected with much ceremony. The youths climb the pole and four jump off while the fifth played music. The ritual pleased the rain god Xipe Totec and other gods, so the rains began again and the fertility of the earth returned.

The Ritual Ceremony of the Voladores of Papantla has been recognized as Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) by UNESCO in 2009

Here’s the process event by event on the ritual:

This is the trunk they're going to fly from.

The five Voladores gather around the trunk and do a ritual dance.

The 5 Voladores climb to the top of the trunk

They meet at the top and one of them starts playing the ritual song with a flute and a drum standing at the very top of the trunk

They will fly around the trunk 13 times before reaching the ground

Tapalpa once again, the beautiful little town in the mountains of Jalisco México, is such a photogenic place. In this case i just shot a regular common street, i mean most of the streets in Tapalpa looks just like this one and because it all looks similar i always waste time thinking on the best spot for a shot and never actually getting it. So this time i just went for the first street with not many cars, with that goal in mind i took this shot.

On new years i visited Tapalpa and decided to do some experiments with HDR’s and still photographs videos. Sometimes is hard not to go overboard with the HDR capabilities, in this case, even if the photo looks over saturated with details i kind of like it. How about you guys? how much is too much?

I also carry on experimenting with still photographs putting together a video, Im intending to do something bigger louder and shinier hopefully soon. Leave your comments.

Here’s the video, don’t forget to toggle it full screen.

When i was in Thailand in 2001 i remember myself wandering around the streets of Bangkok and finding a poster on a travel agency, the photo on the poster caught my attention right away, it was a huge beautiful Buddha, i got in to ask where was that but nobody knew anything about it, i kept asking but I couldn’t find my answer. I came back to Mexico but never forgot about it, back then not many tourist had digital cameras so to look for it on the web without even knowing in which area was placed was a bit difficult. Few years later i saw a documentary on National Geographic about the north of Thaialnd and for my surprise they dedicated few minutes to that Buddha, it was in old Sukhothai Historical Park.

I had the chance to go back to Thailand and of course this time i visited Old Sukhothai, which ended up being one of my favorite places in this world, the capital of the Thai Empire for approximately 140 years. It is a place to really see and comprehend Thai culture.

Wat Si Chum - Old Sukhothai, Thailand

I don’t normally pose for photos myself, but i was so happy back then that i had to do it. Check out Wikipedia’s entry about Sukhothai.

I moved to the UK in 2003, ended up in Brighton in the south coast of England, unlike other towns in the south, Brighton is full of young people, is a small yet very alive town. Something that just can’t escape your attention is the West Pier, which unfortunately is reduced to a pile of debris, is a very capricious structure in the middle of the sea, destroyed and forgotten but too big not to see it and wonder what was it? One of those not very common English sunny days i got out and took this photograph of the sunset, believe me, a sunset in the UK is a big thing.

Here’s wikipedia helping me with the story:

The West Pier was opened in 1866 with a length of 1115 feet.^[1] The pier did not have much of a superstructure until 1893 when a pier head was extended and a pavilion added.^[1] A concert hall was added in 1916 and a new top-deck entrance in 1932.^[1] In 1965 the pier was bought by a company that owned some seafront hotels and entertainment venues.^[1] They had ambitions for the pier but as maintenance costs increased the pier was closed in 1975 when Brighton Corporation declined to buy it and the pier passed into the hands of the Crown Estates Commissioners.^[1] A trust was formed to save the pier and in 1984 they bought it for a nominal sum. ^[1]

The West Pier had been cut off from the shore (partly deliberately, for safety reasons) since 1975, but the West Pier trust offered regular tours of it until the structure suffered a serious partial collapse during a storm on December 29, 2002, when a walkway connecting the concert hall and pavilion fell into the sea. On January 20, 2003 a further collapse saw the destruction of the concert hall in the middle of the pier. On 28 March, 2003 the pavilion at the end of the pier caught fire. Firefighters were unable to save the building from destruction because the collapsed walkway prevented them from reaching it. The cause of the fire remains unknown. On May 11, 2003, another fire broke out, consuming most of what was left of the concert hall. The Fire re-ignited on May 12. Arson was suspected: the West Pier Trust refers to the fires as the work of “professional arsonists”. On June 23, 2004 high winds caused the middle of the pier to collapse completely.

Check out this photos i found surfing the web:

Picture courtesy of Royal Pavilion, Libraries and Museums, Brighton & Hove.

Picture courtesy of Royal Pavilion, Libraries and Museums, Brighton & Hove.

Copyright© Madeleine and John Taylor

Copyright © The Brighton West Pier Trust

Brighton West Pier on fire - http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonryan/

Last November I had the chance to visit this amazing private beach in the coast of Nayarit Mexico called Punta Monterrey. Is amazing to think that this hidden gem is so close to a major tourism hot spot like Puerto Vallarta and yet not many people knows that even exist.  This is an HDR of the northern part of the beach. I did an HDR tutorial before with a photo taken at that same place, check it here.

I’ve been thinking for a while now about making a short film all made out of still photographs, i did my first test there, check it out:

November 09 @ Monterrey Beach from Claudio Uribe on Vimeo.

A day at Monterrey Beach, November 2009

This is the hotel’s website www.monterreybeach.com.

Have a great Christmas!!

While i was in Nepal, my colleague Sajani kindly took me to this fantastic place called Nagarkot which is the highest point at the Kathmandu valley, perfect pristine blue skies, the Kathmandu valley around you and a glorious view of the Himalayas on the eastern Nepal. I arrived just in time to watch the sun setting behind those immense mountains. The next day i woke up before sunrise, wore every single piece of clothing i had in my backpack, got my self black tea and rush with my camera to see the sun coming up from the Kathmandu Valley, probably one of most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen, i even forgot the freezing and dry -4 degrees.

Thailand is a beautiful place, full of cultural and religious symbolism. Lotus flowers can be seen everywhere, according to legend, Gautama Buddha was born with the ability to walk and everywhere he stepped, lotus flowers bloomed. This photograph was taken at Sukhothai Historical Park in northern Thailand, a stunning place where i spent some days riding my bike around, and pretty much everywhere you look you’ll see some sort of religious symbolism like the lotus flower in this picture which was placed on the hands of a statue of Buddha long before i encountered it.