432 - Arcos de Milenio
Today's shoot was at these MASSIVE yellow arches that looked like they were created by Ronald McDonald on acid. By the end of it, I was craving french fries like nobody's business.
We discovered this place on Google Maps, as it stood out with a couple thousand reviews and happened to be smack dab in the middle of Guadalajara. Literally. But the place isn't wasn't so simple to access.
Sigh. It's never going to be easy to get a photo in Mexico, is it?
Of course not. Because this place happened to be in the middle of a monstrous roundabout intersection. And since the roads are confusing as fuck in Mexico, there was literally cars coming from every direction.
For such a modern piece of art, they made it next to impossible to photograph. You'd have to be willing to place Frogger with your life to get inside.
Luckily, I happened to be a Frogger pro in middle school, so I decided to take my chances. We showed up about an hour and half before sunset, and began to scope out the scene.
The roundabout was about four lanes thick, with two sources of incoming traffic. One from the highway, and one from a main road. It wasn't going to be easy... We had to time it perfect. I set up camp, prepared to wait 20 minutes for the perfect gap. It happened immediately.
"RUN" I screamed at Haley, and we booked it like our lives depended on it (they did) to get to the middle. I almost lost my shit when my sandal slid off my foot but I caught it, barely.
We made it.
PHEW. Alright. Now for the second hardest part. Getting a photo.
Actually it was pretty easy. Here was my first shot:
“Urban Utopia”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8
[ISO 640 ~ 17mm ~ f/8 ~ 1/200s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
If you're wondering where all the cars in the backdrop are, they're gone. I Photoshopped them out. Plus all the buildings and overpasses. They annoyed the fuck out of me (it was too busy) so I took em' out. Definitely a surrealist interpretation here... Almost looked like a 3D render. I spent some time trying to figure out what to add in replacement, but I settled on keeping it like this. It's just real enough to be believable, but just strange enough to turn the eye.
Oh, and this was one of my first successful panoramas ever. I usually fuck them up so I avoid them at all costs, but this thing was so wide I couldn't fit in in my 17mm up close. (The road was about 1 foot behind me.) I figured out that in order to get a solid panorama shot, you need to have a LOT of overlap in the photos. I'd say about 1/3 of the images. This is where I always messed it up in the past. No mas.
MOVING ON... I decided I also wanted a fancy shmancy abstract shot of the curves on it, so I got this baby:
“Golden Arches”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8
[ISO 640 ~ 17mm ~ f/8 ~ 1/200s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
Pro Tip: In architecture shots, feel free to flip them around to add interest to the photo. I liked it upside down here, it added on to the "what is going on" element.
And with that, we finished our shoot. I tried a couple more angles, but couldn't get anything more interesting than what I had, because of the strange roundabout backdrop. I only have so much time to Photoshop these things, and one was enough for me.
Time for some fries. BYE.
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
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