Joel.Rojo's Photos

This was a hypnotic view, being there. I was seating on the grass with some friends, and we are were having a good time, under the trees. It was a pretty good moment, and many of us had never talked to each other despite we knew each other since a while ago. So as we were talking, I went absent and laid on the grass, and what I saw was pretty much what you can see on the picture. When I look at it, actually, somehow I get the feeling that the clouds are moving between the trees like in a corridor of sorts. To make it more dreamlike, I barely added some blur to the picture. Just a tiny bit, so the leaves would still be contrasting against the sky and clouds.

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I think I got lucky with this shot, I had been around this beach for a while, and since I laid eyes in this place I had expected to be able to get this image I had in my head. Our boat finally came, and as they were cleaning it, we were told it would be a matter of minutes before we had to leave, so I started walking around again, and this image I had in my head just came to me, but moving faster than I expected. So I ran, taking pictures on the move, then crouching and shooting, running again, taking shots standing, crouching, getting myself into the water, and finally, just before the boat touched land, I got this shot, pretty much the one in my head, even the fisherman is almost posing in the way I expected him to. It was also hard because, as you can probably see, there was another boat coming right behind that I didn't want in the picture... Actually, just the stick poking in kind of bothers me the more I think about it. Still, this is meant to be a romantic view of our hardworking people and a more simple way of life, I didn't fool around too much with the settings, most of it is in the composition, it's what it was meant to be.

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As I took this picture, we were drawing close to our destination, less than an hour into the pacific, and the point this time is to illustrate this feeling of direction among an unpredictable sea that extends on every direction. The intent of direction is illustrated by the stick going out of the boat, which sort of points to the clouds and the island to the left. I could have make the composition so that the boat seemed to aim directly at these things, but that was not the point. I know I hardly ever find myself zooming right onto target. Serendipity is a close friend, fortunately. I did have to raise the contrast levels to make the cloud visible, and toy around with the sharpness to make the sea look, well, sharp, hard to get across, though I did wanted to keep the cloud as more of an ethereal presence.

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What I'm trying to convey here is the sense of this small, beaten-up boat, standing defiantly to the endless sea, apparently all by itself. I don't want to get overtly elaborate, but it's meant to be a paradox on ourselves, petty race mankind, rising each day to affront an often less than pleasurable world, which is why the edges look like they do, as darkness circling our little guy, who regardless of everything is still there. I also played a little with the contrast and sharpness, to make clearer the point of the boat being the good guy, and the darker environment the uncontrollable, unpredictable, and sometimes even downright evil forces that form our surroundings. Still, I didn't want the boat to look flawlessly white, we might be the good guys in our own stories, but no one of us is actually 100% good. Also, I still wanted the chips, dirt and flaws of the boat to remain noticeable. We carry our own baggage of defects, wounds both emotional and physical, and so does Mr. little boat on the picture. I hope some of that comes across, though. Otherwise I just took a photo of a beaten-up boat... And a couple minutes away from you.

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As stated there, this comes from a set of two pictures, the other one being found at http://beta.zooomr.com/photos/JoelRojo/786680 Again, this are the feet of Maria, one of my closest friends. It's hard to say how much of this is candid and how much purposeful composition. It did flow, but I struggled to integrate it better in a composition to capture what I got from the image, a sort of playful shyness, spontaneous as everyday moments (this everyday theme to me comes from the beaten up kind of sidewalk that made the usual meeting spots of my childhood and teen years). Ironically though, as much I insist on everyday themes, I don't meet this friend that often.

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This is a portrait of a good friend of mine, Ireri. She happens to be one of the most energetic, positive people I've met in my whole life. Now, often i get sick of people who just seem to try too hard to be like this, but this is not the case with her. Rather, she's the kind of people that make you smile by greeting you. So when I found this spot, and how I could make the lighting work in a photograph, it was pretty obvious who I should invite to be in the picture. The purpose, then, was the show a warm environment that seems to flow from her, casting shadows away. I also thought that if she was to be where the light comes from, she should less sharp, so I decided to try that, taking care to let the details on the rocks. I know that more intensive editing would have made this easier, but I dislike such practices on my photos. Nothing wrong if you do it, though, it just differs from my vision.

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This is a shot of a non urbanized area near my city. This emphasis on nature and a simple life is illustrated on the big sky: It doesn't only represent peace and quiet, but it also adds emphasis on the rest of the piece with its tone.

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Technical issues, I'll fix it before commenting.

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This is another take on the sunset seen on another picture seen in this same gallery ( http://beta.zooomr.com/photos/JoelRojo/782361 ). The difference is quite obvious, the tones indicate that we approach to the end of the beautiful show that are the sunsets in Altamura. Then, to go along with that theme, and the theme from the other picture, I played with the illumination to reinforce the perception of a path, which I like because the lighting looks kind of pretty where there are steps in the sand. I would have loved to get richer colors in the sky but I wasn't able to do that and keep what I liked originally. I'll have to add that to the reasons to go back.

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After a more serious attempt at this same location, which you can also see at http://beta.zooomr.com/photos/JoelRojo/788960 , I went for a more Lomo kind of picture, as an experiment, which resulted in this. I specially like the figures drawn by the lights because of the overexposure, they never seem to form this kind of shapes when you want them to, which is a good thing, keeps you fresh on your approach.

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I really like this picture. Initially I disliked the steps on the sand, as they interfered with what I wanted to capture initially, but it became pretty obvious that a pair of traces on sand dunes going towards the sun, itself setting and painting a beautiful sky, had pretty decent possibilities too, amirite? It still took a bit of tinkering so it could keep the direction, composition and flow it (hopefully) has, and keeping foreign objects (like COW DUNG) out of the composition, but I really like this picture, and I hope you do too.

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This is a view of the City Hall of my city, Culiacán. Not much to say really, I just tried to take the best shot I could.

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This is a picture of an island in Mexico which the locals call "Isla de los Pájaros", which translates as "Bird Island", and it's quite an spectacle. I've always found this kind of bird silhouettes to be quite evocative. Romantic, even. And even if the picture does not by any means illustrate the enormous bird population of this small, deserted island in the northwest of Mexico, I think it does somehow capture the feeling of drawing near to it, seeing how that fog in the sky is actually a swarm of birds, making a dynamic painting of their silhouettes on the sky.

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Despite that not much is happening as the shot was taken, I took the picture anyway because I felt that there was a sense of movement from the line of the Malecon, the sea, the rock lines. There isn't much of a variation on the colors, though, and that's what I regret the most.

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Having the camera near floor-level was not just a creative resource this time, it goes with the theme of longing and need of what the altar represents. The altar and the path to it are the bright parts of the picture, and the luminance rises as you go up vertically in the photograph, which is because of the religious themes on it. If you dislike the religious motif, there's also a door to the left that's actually as bright as the ceiling of the altar, which I didn't want to left out. To me it represents what we are yet to find out, but I'd be interested to find out what it could be for you. For anyone who cares, this is the Cathedral of my native city: Culiacán, in México.

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This actually happened far away from all the other boat related pictures I've taken. This happens in Mazatlan, while most of the others are taken in a relatively unknown placed called Altamura. The intent on this picture is pretty straightforward. Here we have this little boat, taken apart by the sea, God knows what kind of storm left it in this state. It's body broken, it's motor lost, it's sail ripen off and it's tripulation deserted it. Now it has been left among rocks, and the sky promises more storms. However, the boat is is still heading towards the sea, hoping for the tide to rise and give him one more chance to try his luck at the ocean. That's pretty simple, but as I looked at this boat, I found this a much interesting idea, so I had to capture it. It wasn't easy, I had to climb on some rocks, and take the pictures from awkward positions, but I think it came out OK. I did augment the sharpness to make the rocks look more threatening, underexposed to make it look darker, and added contrast to make the clouds more noticeable. I didn't want to mess with the background though, even if I think it detracts from the theme.

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I'm hesitant to call myself a photographer, really. Actually, the most I've done is saying that I'm an amateur photographer, emphasis on amateur. However, I do think that there's something that makes us spend our time doing this kind of things, playing an instrument, writing a short story, make a painting, take a photograph. And despite that those of us that do try to do that kind of things are the minority, at least some of our work resonates to everyone. What makes us draw, what makes us sing, it comes from this common places, that when tickled the right way makes us shiver. None of us completely comes up with anything, I guess that's what I'm trying to say, and these common places and themes might be everywhere. The evocative elements might as well reside in an aroma, a chord, or an image. I don't know why I felt I had to take this shot, or why does it resonate with me and some of you. Whoever laid those bricks surely wasn't making an aesthetic statement, and being there, nobody saw anything special to the ceiling I was photographing. Despite everything, the image remains compelling all the same, and I'm glad I can share the hidden beauty of a small laying some bricks, lost in an abandoned basement, in the nowhere of Mexico.

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