446 - Mayan Monkey
Today’s adventure was a bit of a shorty, mainly because it was Christmas day. But since it was my first Christmas away from home, we had plans to make it different.
Not that different was better, per say. Traditionally, my family always cooked some of our best meals around the holiday season, and we had some great traditions that we practiced the week before the holidays this year. Although only the date that was different, the reality was we had to be back in Mexico for Christmas day.
Luckily, I was back in Cancun with my best friend and girlfriend, who had similar holiday experiences. It couldn’t have been better.
Since we’d spent the last couple weeks photographing hard, we decided to make it a rave night because we don’t party enough. It’d be a new, interesting holiday dynamic- drinking heavily to the sound of jingle bells in a club. And we just happened to be a block away from Coco Bongo, an infamous club owned by none other than Jim Carrey himself.
I had no idea what to expect, other than the absolutely fantastic word of mouth this place had received. People compared the place to “a Broadway theater production turned nightclub,” and since I’d been to both, my expectations were high.
Once night rolled around, we strolled out in a birthday suits, ready to get absolutely plastered. We started off with a hearty meal of steak fajitas, to ensure our stomach would be able to process the immense amount of alcohol about to be ingested. After all, Coco Bongo was known for it’s open bar.
Upon arrival, it seemed like a typical night club. But within 5 minutes, the vibe completely changed. Ropes dropped from the ceiling, and people from the crowd were immediately swept into the sky. It took me a few second to process that the people were actors. They began swinging on ropes like Cirque de Soleil, in a dazzling display of light and color.
My jaw dropped as the production of this place unfolded before my eyes. I’ve been to the most notable nightclubs in Las Vegas, and nothing even came close to this. Our next four hours were spent with midget Beetlejuice characters, live action Spiderman, and half-naked divas- all suspended above our gaping eyes.
And then we woke up the next morning. Blurry flashbacks of the night echoed into my buzzing head, and a wave of anxiety washed over me. Now that I’m older, my hangovers tend to last a few days and come with a hint of existential dread.
We all knew this was coming though, so we planned to lay on the beach for the entire day. And that we did- happily. I never realized the benefit of planning an “off-day” after drinking heavily. I’m so used to packing myself full of shit, that simply relaxing through a hangover was a foreign concept to me. I was happy as a hungover clam.
After a few hours of lazy swimming and tanning, we headed back to Tyler’s hostel to get a bite to eat. The area was infamous for alligators since it was situated on a mangrove lagoon, and there were countless signs warming against feeding the alligators. I’d spend the past three days looking for one, but not a single one emerged.
Until now.
I glanced over the edge in a lazy attempt to look something besides my turkey sandwich, and low and behold a beautiful alligator was waiting. I’d seen a few in Louisiana before, but only their heads- from a distance. This one was less than 10 feet from me, and fully visible.
I put my sandwich down, ran to grab my camera, and quickly snagged a few shots from above:
“Floating Boi”
Taken with Sony a7rIII + Zeiss 24-70mm f/4
[ISO 320 ~ 51mm ~ f/9 ~ 1/640s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
"Sketchy Alley”
Taken with Sony a7rIII + Zeiss 24-70mm f/4
[ISO 320 ~ 24mm ~ f/9 ~ 1/640s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
I then realized I needed to get closer. I knew that it could disappear at any second, so without hesitation I grabbed the old rusty ladder nearby, and climbed down- a mere three feet from the alligator. That’s when I got this up-close banger:
"Eye of Sauron”
Taken with Sony a7rIII + Zeiss 24-70mm f/4
[ISO 320 ~ 70mm ~ f/9 ~ 1/400s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
A Christmas miracle. Or should I say a Day After Christmas Hangover Miracle. My day was made.
I should note that a decent amount of Photoshop work went into those first two shots, which was probably my biggest lesson of this shoot. The original shots actually consisted of a fence RIGHT in front of the alligators mouth- which ruined the entire vibe. But since almost all the water surrounding the alligator was the exact same texture, I simply used the content aware feature to recreate more water in place of the fence.
Thus, my lesson was this: If you have enough (extremely) similar textures to copy, you can mask out BIG objects with content aware easily. For the finer details, I used the healing brush to blend the spots where the texture didn’t align perfectly. It took me maybe 15 minutes to smooth it all out, per shot.
And boom. That’s how I got this Christmas adventure in the bag, without even meaning to.
Fun fact, we all came back with COVID after that night. But that’s a story for another day ;).
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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