437 - Las Pozas
I was in a wretched mood when today’s shoot started, which was ironic because we were shooting at a Zen surrealist garden in the middle of the jungle.
If I’m being honest, it was one of the places I was most looking forward to visiting in Mexico, but my head wasn’t in it. After shooting water-filled adventures the past five days in a row, I was beat.
But you know how we do it here.
We woke up about an hour before our “entrance time,” and got ready for the session. We’d booked a spot at La Pozas online the night before, and it cost about $15 USD each. For Mexico, that’s an expensive entrance fee- so our expectations were high.
But the moment we show up, I was told my bandana won’t work as a COVID mask, and that I needed to buy one from a local vendor (that was conveniently their friend). They also wouldn’t let us use our tripods on the tour, “because we didn’t have written permission,” which they refused to give us at the time. And finally, the staff made us pay extra on the spot for a “mandatory tour,” which was going to be completely in Spanish.
I was pissed. From their website and reviews, we were under the impression you can walk around the place and explore on your own, which makes a big difference in photography. Being forced on a tour meant a constant crowd, little time to shoot scenes, and pretending to pay attention to a guide we didn’t understand.
We’d spent the past week managing to avoid the tour scam, but today we didn’t have a choice. The staff wouldn’t physically let us in without buying one, even though we’d already paid for our entrance fee.
5 minutes into the tour, I was not in a good mood. 20 minutes into the tour, it hadn’t changed. 30 minutes in, I realized I hadn’t taken a single photo. My brain was fuming- which is a problem when you’re trying to capture peaceful nature scenes.
I needed to change my mindset. But how?
I started taking photos of some plants I saw, hoping I could fix at least something up in post. I wasn’t trying too hard because I was still fighting my mood. In the barrage of lame photos I took, I found one banger that I was able to crop and juice up a bit in the ‘shop. Check this out:
“Banana Republic Jr.”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Zeiss 24-70mm f/4
[ISO 1000 ~ 57mm ~ f/5.6 ~ 1/80s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
That’s one thing I like about shooting with a 42mp camera. Not the fact that you can blow up photos bigger, but the fact that you can crop extra fine details out of a scene and make something out of it. So yes, this is an instance where gear DOES matter.
One thing that I also am starting to do with macro scenes like this is manually masking out the background brightness, to make the subject stick out more. It adds a nice creative effect.
We kept moving along, and finally we got to a strange building full of off-beat staircases. It brought me some nostalgia from a PC game I used to play as a kid, called Myst. I liked the way the passages in the scene seemed to lead to dark, mysterious places, and the vibrant contrast of the green:
“Limbo Alive”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8
[ISO 400 ~ 18mm ~ f/7.1 ~ 1/80s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
After I snagged that shot, it tipped me mood over the edge, and I finally let my anger wash away. I was angry for dumb reasons out of my control, and I concluded that I needed to catch up on my sleep later. After all, today was going to be my last shoot of the week.
I think this whole “mindset” is a topic that is relevant to shooting as much as I do- my mood isn’t always in it. Most landscape photographers shoot for fun, and if they’re not in the mood they just say fuck it and watch TV. But I’m shooting for fun AND technical discipline, so I have to deal with this type of problem on occasion.
It can be an extremely difficult mental block to overcome, especially when I’m trying to focus on the beauty of something through creativity.
For me taking photos of literally anything helps. Like I said earlier, I was shooting things that I thought looked stupid, just to push a button. But I think there’s something in telling your mind you’re going to shoot anyway. Somewhere down the road, your mind thinks “well, I might as well make it good if it’s happening no matter what.” And then boom… You’re out of it.
That was surely the case for me in this shoot, when I shot my magnum opus of this adventure:
“Oracle Gate”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8
[ISO 400 ~ 17mm ~ f/7.1 ~ 1/80s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
Looks like we stepped straight into a fantasy novel, eh?
I used my theory that I developed the other day in La Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel. It was about centering architectural features to give the scene a subject, that the rest can be built off. (In this case the centered subject is the main door.)
Initially I found that it was hard for me to follow through with developing this photo because the symmetry wasn’t there, and it felt slightly unbalanced. Particularly because there was two yellow doors in the center/right, and none on the left.
But then I realized that is the nature of the ENTIRE place. The surrealist movement was centered around pure thought without bias. I took that as a sign to override my ideals of OCD symmetry and balance with some strangeness.
So thus, a lesson with this photo was that sometimes I have to embrace the non-balance, especially if it’s a (background) ideal of the entire environment.
Something I’ve never thought of before, until today. Thanks surrealism.
And that’s how I overcame my bad mood to shoot a banger or three today.
♫ Why you always in a mood... ♫
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
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