Tag Archives: photography

A town in Mexico called Tequila

As I’ve mentioned before, there are a lot of nice places to visit around Guadalajara city. One of those places is a town called Tequila. It is the place where almost all of the world’s Tequila production is made and where the drink got its name.

There are two ways to get to Tequila. The first and most recommended one is by train. It’s a touristic train that includes mariachi music and lots of tequila sampling along the way. I think they also include a tour into the major tequila producer’s factories. The other one, the one I took, was by driving there. Next time I’ll take the train and let you know how that went.

Tequila is a very small town but there’s plenty to visit. Downtown is very traditional with its cathedral and its rocky streets. There is a Tequila museum where you can learn about the town’s history as well as the drink’s origins and production process.

But the best way to learn about tequila production is to take a tour into any of the many tequila factories around the town.

I went with my friend Luis Perez and we took a tour into La Cofradia. They have a very traditional way to make tequila and they bottle it in handcrafted bottles.

First the agave plant is cut and the heart of the plant is collected. They gather them and put them in large ovens.

Once it’s ‘cooked’ it’s smashed and all the juice and sugars are extracted, similar to the sugar cane process. At this point our guide let us try a piece of a cooked agave heart and it tasted very sweet, delicious.

The extracted juices are let to ferment in large containers and are then distilled several times until we have the commercial tequila ready for bottling.

I say several times because the first two times, the tequila has about 55% alcohol and it is forbidden for commercial use. But you get to try a large shot of it right there at the factory floor! Yes, you are expected to drink tequila like crazy during the whole tour.

Later we found out that guitar player Carlos Santana has a brand of tequila made right there at that factory called Casa Noble. I’ve never seen it before and got to try the three types of it.

At the end of the night we finished it enjoying some fresh tequila based drinks.

We walked around town and of course, we couldn’t miss stopping for some local tacos in the street.

And finished the night at a local bar enjoying some live music.

It was a very fun trip, with lots of new information to learn, a lot of drinking and good times.

As always you can checkout more photos of this trip at my Flickr photo set.

Tapalpa trip to the Big Stones

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Around Guadalajara city there are a lot of interesting beautiful places to visit. Some locals say that the best part of living in this city is its surroundings.

So I went to visit Tapalpa, Jalisco. A place known for its sheep barbecue, rest log cabins and the big stones. Since it was a small one day trip, we just stopped by the stones and eat at a restaurant the famous sheep barbecue, which turned out pretty good.

There still are many places around Guadalajara that I’d like to visit soon. Specially that Tequila Express train that takes you to a town called Tequila origin of the famous drink.

Intermoda 2013 fashion runway day 2

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I want to share some more photos taken on the second day of the Intermoda 2013 fashion event.

There were a few lessons learned that day, or better to say, after that day while processing the RAW files of the photos. Somehow between takes, I switched my camera to Auto ISO with a very high maximum limit. So most of my pictures were taken with the high ISO setting of 3200, which resulted on very noisy pictures. I’m very sad about that, but I’m sure it won’t happen to me again.

Anyway, there were some good shots I’d like to share, despite the high noise on the images. I Hope you like them too.

The evening started with bride dresses.

Then some casual wear

Then some jewerly

Some sort of experimental fashion was also present

To finish off with a spring collection

If you would like to see all 400 images taken, checkout my Intermoda 2013 Flickr set.

Shooting a fashion runway event is not as simple as one might think. Things happen too quickly and one has to be in full control of the gear you own. I hope I get a new opportunity to photograph events like this to polish my skills with the lessons learned and show them here.

Intermoda 2013 casual fashion runway day one

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So I attended the Intermoda 2013 Fashion show at the Expo Guadalajara last week, and here are some shots I took from the side of the runway. It’s not my first time shooting a runway (other times here and here), but it was my first time with my Nikon gear shooting it, so I had some trouble with the autofocusing speeds and the constant changes in lighting. The lessons learned I posted them in my previous post.

I tried to take photos of the event in a little different way. Showing a bit more of the place, the crowd and the photographers in the press area at the end of the runway. I was trying to reflect being there, or the perspective of the models and not the typical magazine-like perfect shots. I’ll keep exploring, in the meantime, I hope you enjoy these images.

You can see more photos taken that day at my Intermoda 2013 Flickr set

Fashion runway photography tips

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Taking pictures at a fashion runway is challenging: light changes, models swift by very fast in front of you, and if you don’t have a press pass or similar to be lucky enough to be in the photographer’s press area, it is hard to get good shots.

Runway events are a great opportunity to get some experience in fashion photography. If you’re just starting with photography they are a great chance to take pictures of beautiful and professional models without costing you anything or having to reach out for them.

Get in

The first thing you need is to get an invitation or know about these events. If you don’t know anyone in the field or close contact within the industry there is still hope. Follow fashion bloggers in your area, clothes stores or mall’s twitter accounts. They will eventually post something about an upcoming event. Many are free, some by invitation, but you can then contact them through their social media accounts and ask for an invite.

If you’re lucky to get a press pass, you’re golden. The press area is strategically placed for photographers to get the best and constant illumination and angle, right at the end of the catwalk where models stop and pose for you. If not, then you’ll be seating at the sides of the catwalk, and you have a few seconds and a weird angle to get your shot right before the model passes you by.

Use a monopod

Tripods are bulky and take too much space to set up, monopods are better in this case. What you need here is a place to rest the camera, assuming you’re using a DSLR camera, that thing is heavy to hold after a while.

Set to Auto ISO and Aperture priority

Then let’s cover the camera settings. After a few trial and error, what works best for me is to set ISO to Auto. This way you will have the fastest shutter speed available. Use Aperture priority mode and set to the lowest F-stop possible. An F-2.8 or F-4 is a nice setting to get some depth of field and stand out the model in the image.

Auto focus

On Nikon cameras, use the 3D Focus setting. With this focus setting you select a point of focus, and once locked, the autofocus will follow whatever is on that focus point as long as you keep your shutter button half-way pressed. This will save you from having blurry images. I don’t know if there’s an equivalent setting on Canon cameras.

Take verticals

Sometimes a wide photo on the runway will reveal too much of the area, instead of focusing on the model, who’s our main subject. There are some mounts for the monopod that will allow you to take verticals instead of the standard horizontals. If you don’t have one, then get used to your camera weight because it’s going to be tough. Also, try to keep your elbows as close as possible to your body. There’s people sitting right next to you that also want to see the runway and you can annoy them with your elbows.

Use a fast lens

Models are coming and going very fast and there’s little time to frame and focus your shot. A fast lens can be very helpful.

Hope this tips are of help. I had to learn this the hard way having lots of blurry pictures.

Do you have any other tips to share about fashion photography at runways? Please share on the comments below.

Tampico downtown photowalk in the rain

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Started the year with a nice calm photo walk on a rainy day at my hometown, Tampico, Mexico. My friend Luis Perez picked me up and we went to have the traditional breakfast from Tampico: Torta de la Barda, at the place where the exquisite dish started. I wanted to say legendary, but it’s not that well known across Mexico. But the people who’ve tried it have always loved it.

There is a more well known dish from Tampico, it’s called the Tampiqueña, which is a strip of salted steak (cecina) with enchiladas, black beans and fresh cheese, grilled onions and guacamole, but that’s a dinner dish.

The torta de la barda is typically what you would have after a party very late at night…or early morning. The hot spicy green sauce and the mix of all its ingredients make a great meal to set your stomach after some heavy drinking. Some say that spicy food helps removing your drunkness. I don’t have the science to back that up, but by my experience it does make you more alert.

Anyway, last night we didn’t had any drinks at all, since we’ve both been living out of our hometown we only missed our traditional local food.

After our first stop, we decided to walk around downtown and into the market. It was a gray rainy day but that didn’t stopped us from enjoying Tampico’s downtown.

The variety of fish and seafood in the market are great, you can find anything there. And best of all, is that almost all of it is fresh from that same morning.

So we decided to get some fresh oysters to snack later in the day.

After we got everything we needed for our oyster snack, we walked out of the market and into the two plazas: Plaza Libertad and Plaza de Armas.

At Plaza de Armas we visited “El Globito” an old and now traditional lunch place where you can enjoy a good refreshing drink.

This place brings me back memories of my childhood. My father used to take me to “El Globito” to have a drink called Crema de coco (coconut cream) which is coconut mix with milk and some cinammon on top. It is a very refreshing drink on a hot, sweaty summer day.

We wanted to end our downtown local tour with some Churros, but we were stuffed from the several things we tried around the market after our breakfast, and that coconut cream besides fresh is heavy too, so we were stuffed.

You can see more photos of this photowalk at my Tampico Market Flickr set. It was nice to enjoy my hometown again. I missed shooting some photos of other places in Tampico, but I’ll be back some other time to do that. It’s good to go back to where you came from, get back some memories by visiting places, and see how things have changed since you left. The rain added a bit of melancholy to the whole scenery. A nice way to start a year by going back and reviewing where you come from, where you’ve been and where you want to be in the future.

Snapseed for Android vs Instagram

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Snapseed

After Google bought Nik Software, makers of the then iOS-only app Snapseed, today they have released it for Android and for free! Snapseed is a very easy to use photo app to edit and enhance your shots.

Editing photos with Snapseed is very easy and the results are good. But let me compare it with the most popular photo sharing app right now: Instagram.

Filters

They both apply filters to photos. On Instagram you select the desired filter and see the preview instantly. You can’t select more than one filter on a photo. On Snapseed, not only you can apply several filters to a photo, but you can also tweak the settings of each filter.

instagram filters snapseed filters

You have complete control over each effect you apply and that opens the posiblities to produce very interesting things. Snapseed not only applies filters to a photo, it can also straighten it, sharpen it and apply color correction on it.

snapspeed tweaking options snapseed easy to use

Cropping

On Instagram all photos need to be square, and thus, you have to crop your images if you’re using the standard camera app on your device. Unless you use the Instagram camera app that takes only squared pictures, you will need to leave out something on your image when you crop it. Snapseed works with the full image, no matter the size. This includes panoramic and even the new photo sphere in Android 4.2.

instagram cropping snapseed with panoramic photo

Social

The community is what is lacking in Snapseed, since it’s only a photo editing application, not a social network. But that is why Google has integrated it with Google+ and the photography community there is amazing. On Instagram you have a nice huge community but most of the pictures are not high quality material and since you can’t tweak the filters, you get the same feeling across multiple images and users. But even then, I love browsing the photos from my Twitter contacts that have accounts there, and double tapping to love their posts and explore new users to follow from what my peers have “loved” too.

With Snapseed you can stamp your own unique style to your shots and share them with the huge Google+ photography community. Over there, there’s more than just mobile photos of mirror self shots or coffee and food pictures. It’s a community with great professional and amateur photographers and good quality images. Also, it’s hard to browse and explore the Instagram social network from the browser. There’s been some improvements lately but still, it was not designed to be a web experience but a mobile one. Google+ is a very nice web and mobile experience and lets you post more than just your mobile photos.

instagram post Google plus post via snapseed

Quality

One of my biggest rants about using Instagram is the quality of the images it produces. Since it was designed specifically for mobile devices and mobile sharing, the files are very compressed and with a very low quality. Here’s a sample of the same image before and after Instagram. You can see the difference in quality from miles away. For me, Instagram destroys your images and the only place they look good is on a mobile device (try printing your pictures!). Snapseed doesn’t compress the final image that much, so the result is a lot more enjoyable in any media.

Instagram quality

Snapseed quality

Conclusion

I only use Instagram for it’s sharing capabilities. I can multi-post from one app to several social networks with one click. That part I do like. For the rest, I think that Snapseed covers most of my photo editing needs and it’s very good at that. Snapseed will give you all your photo editing needs on a full size image without completely destroying your image quality. They made it easy to share on Google+, naturally, but you can also send it to any other app with the standard “Share” button functionality, but it won’t be one click.

instagram sharing options google plus post via snapseed

With all these competition for mobile photography, I wonder when will Flickr wake up and what will they do if they ever update and improve their poor and slow app.

Gabriel Saldaña's blog

Emacs, Web Development, free software, photography & lifestyle

Tag Archives: photography

A town in Mexico called Tequila

Tapalpa trip to the Big Stones

Intermoda 2013 fashion runway day 2

Intermoda 2013 casual fashion runway day one