my artistic side of the trip :)

I've been challenging myself to see the art in everything recently. More often than not, I set out with my camera with a specific mission in mind. And I usually stick to it really well. Unfortunately, often times my mindset is not on deviating outside the box. This may sound surprising, but honestly I'm the kind of person who likes to have a plan and then stick very closely to it. So if my plan is to BE creative, then I most certainly will be... however, I want to change that, and let my plans carry me to whatever beauty is around me AT ALL TIMES.

So these are some practice in that area. Most of these were taken during times when you wouldn't expect to find something beautiful... just me walking along taking it all in. I wonder to myself, "how can i capture what I see right now in a 4x6 size rectangle and still make it interesting?" Well here you have my attempts to do that from Mexico...


This is one of the first pictures I snapped after arriving. Our hotel was so beautiful in every way. I mean seriously, it was a Holiday Inn Express... I wasn't expecting too much... especially since it WAS Mexico after all... well i was pleasantly surprised. The feel of the sign our room number was on was the feel of the whole hotel. Very tropical and bright... LOVED IT!

This was a supporting beam in a traditional Mexican restaurant we ate at... The architecture was very cool and I just loved the gourds hanging from it.

Truly, it would be a crime for me not to have a few pictures of flowers... and unfortunately, that's all i have... a few! I was surprised to find that there was more fauna than flora. In fact, the most beautiful flowers I saw were at the prison we visited... where I was not allowed to have my camera. We weren't allowed ANYTHING when we went in there. I literally only had my clothes on, nothing in the hair, no jewelry whatsoever... it was crazy. but yah, that's where the flowers were the most beautiful, DRAT!

I took this one through a fence and wasn't sure how it was going to work out, but I was quite pleased :)


This is my very favorite angle for tree pictures... i kind of wish though that I had used a smaller aperature though so that I could have gotten some more detail in the leaves. They were really cool.

On Monday we went to Patzcuaro to go shopping. There were all kinds of markets in the streets. Fruit and vegetable markets, handmade stuff, pirated dvds... and fish.

My nose has not failed me. No it has not. We rounded the corner and my nostrils were invaded with the smell of dead fish... for some reason I like this smell.


Opposite the dead fish market was this bundled wood... i thought it was cool :)


Then for the best part... the fruit! Oh the fruit down there... what a shame that we didn't eat any of it. Actually not really a shame. The true shame would have been when I brought home a pet parasite living inside of me that I ingested at the same time as one of these lovely fruits.


However, if i had indeed brought a parasite home with me... I would have given it a name. I don't believe that I have a parasite... but that's an unconfirmed report. I have yet to recover fully from the onset of some severe intestinal problems that reared its head on the morning of our arrival back in the states... but it's getting better. I'm sure you wanted to know that *wink*