451 - SFER IK
We’d just about dropped my buddy Tyler off at the airport after traveling with him for the past week, when it hit me. The COVID, that is. I somehow managed to avoid it the entire past week that he’d had it living in our van, until now.
Either that or it was just waiting until the New Year to say hi.
Well, the fact of the matter was that I officially had it. And it wasn’t sitting with me too well. This time, I had a massive headache and strange bouts of vertigo. I’d get really dizzy all of a sudden, then I’d go away after about an hour. The time I’d feel like I was on acid and about to lose my shit.
I was also exhausted, so we decided to hold up at a campground we found about an hour south of Cancun. The plan was to stay there until I started feeling good enough to function like a normal human.
The campground was situated in a vibey little jungle, complete with a private cenote, mini caverns, and enough fire ants to burn down Colorado. I spent most of my time the next couple days laying in the van, staring at my Kindle. I couldn’t even edit, my brain was so dead.
I did however finish the book Into the Wild, which I related to way more than I was expecting.
Every once in awhile I’d go out for a little walk and attempt to take photos, but I couldn’t muster up the strength for something creative. I had about two photoshoot attempts I had to trash because nothing good came of them.
Eventually I decided to just lay down and rest.
A couple days later, I started to feel more up to my spirits, so we decided to continue our drive down south. Our plan was originally to drive into Guatemala right after the new year, but since we had to pass a COVID test to get in, we were forced to wait until we were better.
In the meantime, we decided to drive through Tulum again and hit up this strange art museum we missed on the way in. It was called SFER IK, and it was an offshoot of the Instagram famous hotel Azulik.
The architecture of the hotel was so mind-boggling, it naturally attracted anyone who had anything going on on Instagram. But since the hotel was only for guests (and had rooms averaging a couple thousand USD per night,) they decided to open a museum portion primarily for photographers.
It cost $10 USD to get in, unless you wanted to bring in a real camera, in which case it cost $100 USD. An insane price difference that I wasn’t willing to pay.
But it was an opportunity to dive back into some good ole’ mobile photography- the roots of my photograph career. I hadn’t shot (seriously) on my phone in years.
Ironically, shooting on a phone is actually easier than shooting on a real camera, because it severely limits your options as to what constitutes as a good photo.
The main difference being you’re stuck with one focal length, and a small dynamic range. This means you don’t have to worry about anything photographing that requires focus stacking, zoom, or extreme brightness.
Well, you can, but it’ll look like a trash can.
Thus, when we walked in and breathed in the first gust of sandalwood into our lungs, I was ready for an easy session. And that it was.
I quickly learned it was the kind of place you needed a model for a decent shot, because it was essentially a high class selfie museum. At every corner there was a wannabe Instagram model looking off into the distance, posing over some strange clay countertop.
It was pretty weird, I’m not going to lie. At multiple points I looked at what these people were looking at, because they were looking so intently and I didn’t realize they were posing.
I had Haley model for a few shots, mimicking the vibe. Here was my favorite:
That was taken on my old ass Google Pixel 3. Living proof you don’t need a solid camera for good shots. I just had to make sure I cut the image at the top just right, where the brightness began to blow out from the shallow dynamic range of the phone.
Notice how I framed the circles perfectly in the shot, giving it a universal pattern. I ended up with one more circular close-up shot of her feet on the wicker floor:
After than, the mood in the place was starting to get a bit weird, so we took off. Some dude started aggressively meditating in the corner, breathing so loud the entire place could hear him.
A few moments later some chick went live on Instagram and started ranting to her followers about living their best lives. To top the scene off, a chick in the background started yelling at her partner to get lower with the camera.
Hopefully I didn’t spread to COVID to all these Instaheads. Apparently it doesn’t spread five days after infection, but I guess a few less influencers in the world wouldn’t hurt anybody.
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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