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All my travels are planned with the intention of conducting myself as a cultural photo-journalist of sorts. However, without fail, I return home, transfer my travel photos to my hard drive and essentially forget about all the good intentions I had for my images and travel notes.
This week, I’ve been focused on creating an attractive online portfolio to better promote and share my work. While reviewing example portfolios, I came across a lovely minimalist style with simple headings: People and Objects. I have a lot of work to do before I can trim down to that level of simplicity, but I can work with the spirit of the concept and have begun organizing my work under People, Places, Things, Ideas, Change and Books.
Pyramids at Giza
While sorting through years of images to select portfolio samples to represent my work, pyramid shots from my 2019/2020 trip to Egypt stood out. Giza was the third pyramid site I’ve been to, which led to a search for pictures from prior visits to other pyramid sites.
Pyramids at Chichen Itzá and Uxmal
My first flight and international trip was to the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico for my high school senior trip. We spent a morning at the ancient Maya city-state Chichen Itzá site and honestly, that was the day I fell in love with Mexico. Fourteen years later, I visited a friend in Mexico City and we took a day trip to Teotihuacán, an ancient Aztec city.
“The Maya originated around 3,000 years ago in present-day Guatemala, Honduras, Belize and Mexico.”
Chichenitza.com
Correction: My photo albums are in storage but I took pictures of my high school scrap book on my phone. Another Maya site, Uxmal, was also visited. The below images were taken on 35mm film, possibly on a been a Fuji in 1993.
“[Uxmal] is the largest, most elegant, and most important ruin site in the Puuc area. The Pyramid of the Magician is a truly magnificent structure….The majority of the structures seen today date from 600-900 A.D..”
The Mayan Ruins Website
Pyramids at Teotihuacán
By the time I got to Mexico City in 2007, I had been living in New York City for two years and I didn’t think there was another city that could blow my socks off. I’ve been happily mistaken several times on that score. Americans talk about being the best and biggest at everything and I never realize how indoctrinated I am with such rhetoric until I explore other environments. Mexico City secured Mexico as one of my favorite countries. The architecture, colors, style, sounds, history is so present and available every where you look – and it’s a short flight from anywhere in the United State! During my visit I got to see an excavation site in the center of town where the ancient city Mexico City was built on was discovered. Amazing!
“Teotihuacan was founded as early as 400 B.C., though the largest structures of the city weren’t completed until about 300 A.D.”
History.com
The below images were taken with my Olympus digital camera that held a whopping 1mb memory card at the time (2007). I had never edited any images from this trip until now, they were all hazy, flat, and mostly uninteresting. I certainly didn’t capture the awe of the place. I didn’t do much editing, but removing most of the haze was enough to make them look good. Lightroom does wonders! I stitched some together in Microsoft ICE, adjusted color and sharpness on all and did some final touch-ups in Photoshop. Fourteen years after they were taken with a digital point and shoot. I’m so glad I don’t delete images! 🙂
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