Joel.Rojo's Photos

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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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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This is more of an experiment, really. I tried to do some candid photography, but incorporating the landscape and the flag. The composition is based on the thirds rule, with the stone on the left and the flag on the right as the reference points on a horizontal axis, and the sea level and the malecon as the references on a vertical one. So the intention is both to capture the dynamic of this traditional place in Mazatlan, while also showcasing the natural beauty of the place. Does it work or does it fail at both ends?

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This was an exercise in composition, not much else, I do think that the guy on top adds some feeling to the picture. I did, however, add some contrast and sharpness, to take advantage of the rock formation and the water in it.

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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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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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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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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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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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