Last week I took down my first solo show, ’150K From Here’. It felt good to have the show, and I feel proud of what I accomplished. The hardest part of it being over is trying to decide what to do next. I have a few ideas rolling around inside my head, just waiting for the right one to take hold! Part of me is also enjoying just shooting whatever I feel like at the time. The next big thing for me, photo business-wise, is to start booking more clients now that I don’t have just the show to think about. So I am looking forward to the future and what it holds, and I am proud of what I have achieved. Here are a few views of the gallery as it opened a few weeks back (not all works are in the photos). There are still pieces available for purchase, if anyone is interested. I will also be adding some of the photos to the keyfoto website over the next week.
As I mentioned last week, we had a very brief stay, just 2 nights, in Bayamo. The only reason we stayed 2, was we had planned on doing a trek through Gran Parque Nacional Sierra Maestra to see the Cuban Revolution Headquarters. However, neither Mike nor I were feeling well and we thought it would be best to relax and work on feeling better, as we had a long day of driving the next day. We also didn’t have an exact plan for the hike and how to get to the park. It was kind of complicated, and we weren’t able to plan it ahead of time. I think I would try and get closer to the park, stay in a town closer to the La Plata entrance. At times it was very hard to plan parts of the trip due to lack of info available while in Canada, and not being able to book things ahead of time. The only thing I managed to do ahead of time was book the casa particulars, and make a rough itinerary. Everything else (and at times even the casas) had us flying by the seat of our pants.
So in Bayamo, we walked around town a bit, there wasn’t a whole lot to see. We ate in an amazing paladar (restaurant) twice, attempted to make phone calls home as we had found a pay phone, and spent most of our time on the balcony outside our room reading and playing cards. I also took the time to take photos of our unsuspecting Cuban neighbours, catching them in the real, everyday moments of their lives.
The photo above was what I was shooting through (with a max. zoom of 70mm at the time). Cuba definitely doesn’t have ‘codes’ when it comes to electrical “upgrades” or housing. Throughout the afternoon we kept hearing a loud buzzing noise, and eventually we also noticed that the wires were arcing. This made us question the safety of the wiring, and our proximity to it. Glad I got my photos before that! Hah!
Next week we are off to Baracoa. I will probably do at least 2 posts from there, as we had stayed there for 4 days, the longest we stayed in any one place.
As you may know, I had this post all finished, I was in the middle of publishing it, and my server went down. Ugh. So I lost the whole post as the auto-save mode wasn’t working. The technical issues have been ironed out, but there’s still the matter of this here post. So, here I go again:
Trinidad. I really enjoyed our stay in this city. It has a vibrant heart immersed in arts, music & culture. It’s very different from any of the other towns/cities in Cuba (we stayed in about 15 different places), and Trinidad was unique. It is a more laid back and easy-going city. The 2nd most frustrating aspect of our trip to Cuba (the 1st being navigating – I’ll share more on that another day), was being hassled non-stop by people on the street. I’m a non-crowd-of-people, open spaces kind of person (think small, Canadian, prairie city), and was thrown out of my comfort zone for most of the trip. I really like Trinidad as people would take a polite “No, thank-you” and let you keep walking. In almost every other city, the street peddlers & hustlers were more in your face, and would follow you as you walked and there were people pulling you in every direction every 10 feet. It got tiresome very quickly. So we appreciated the calm, relaxed attitude of Trinidad.
The city of Trinidad lies not far from the coast and a short trip’s distance to the mountains. We were only there for 3 nights, and could have stayed at least a week with plenty to do. I’d highly recommend adding Trinidad to your list of places to go in Cuba. We stayed in the old part of town right along the historical Plaza Mayor. This section of the town is pedestrian only (although that includes mopeds & horses). We went out every night for a walk around town and took in the music and quiet streets. We talked with a few random Cubans and we kept running into this group from the Netherlands (they were the ones swimming at Topes -featured in last week’s post). The house we stayed in was owned by direct descendants of the original Colonial families, as were all the homes in the Plaza Mayor area. Enough talk, on to the photos. Welcome to Trinidad:
One of the many market alleys. The white clothing is handmade & embroidered. It's specific to this region due to the history of the African slaves and the popular Santaría religion.
Mike and I searched for days for this gallery in Trinidad. We had been told about it by Roy & Christina (2 Netherlanders that were staying at our casa in Havana), and they had shown us pictures of some of the art. They said it should be easy to find, as it's the only gallery with clowns. We didn't come across it until our last walk through the town, we were glad we did, and bought 2 (non-clown) paintings.
Streets, buildings, telephone poles, trees - none of these are straight and make for difficult aligninment in photos. But it adds to the quirkiness of Trinidad.
This is a house of Santaría. Fans of the tv show, 'departures' should recognize it.
This is all that was inside the front room of this house. It was very quiet, and kind of creepy.
The casa particular we stayed in (I've found photos of this house in every guide book we've looked at for Trinidad)
Next week will be a brief post about our very short stay in Cuba’s 2nd oldest town, Bayamo.
Also – I have recently entered the world of Twitter. I will throw a link up on the website, feel free to follow me: @keyfoto
Well, I’m back. Cuba was an interesting trip. The more time that passes since our return, I start forgetting about how frustrating and difficult of a trip it was. Over the next few months I’ll be sharing some of the photos from my travels. I am thinking of doing a separate trip blog (at some point), as this is a photo blog, so don’t expect too many stories in these posts. However, do expect a photo adventure of Cuba! Enjoy!
(Old) Havana by day
These are taken from our casa particular in Old Havana.
Looking towards the Jose Martí monument.
Havana by night, looking out the window in our room. With the National Capitol Building (El Capitolio) in lights.
Had a busy weekend, took a trip with Mike & the dogs to Wallace Lake. Shot some film, so I have nothing to show you for that just yet. But here are some scanned pinhole images I did awhile back, but just recently scanned. They are unedited, hence the dust, but I thought it might be neat to share.
Neg 1
Pos 1
Neg 2
Pos 2
Neg 3
Pos 3
