The Magic of the Cities.

Zen promotes the rediscovery of the obvious, which is so often lost in its familiarity and simplicity. It sees the miraculous in the common and magic in our everyday surroundings. When we are not rushed, and our minds are unclouded by conceptualizations, a veil will sometimes drop, introducing the viewer to a world unseen since childhood. ~ John Greer

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

West Hills Woods III




Photographers feel guilty that all they do for a living is press a button. - Andy Warhol

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Tuesday, August 21, 2012

West Hills Woods II




Sometimes I enjoy just photographing the surface because I think it can be as revealing as going to the heart of the matter. - Annie Leibovitz

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Monday, August 20, 2012

West Hills Woods



Mexico City Woods : Desierto de los Leones
Desierto de los Leones (Desert of the Lions) National Park is located in the Sierra de las Cruces mountain range west of the city center with an area of 1,867 hectares, representing fifteen percent of the entire Valley of Mexico. The area was used as a retreat for a religious group, thus the name Desierto (Desert) means not "arid place", but not populated. The "Leones" part of the name does not refer to the animals, but rather to the original landlord's lastname.

The park's altitude varies between 2,600 and 3,700 meters above sea level, giving the area a relatively cold and damp climate. It is a forested area primarily with pines, oyamel firs and holm oaks with many brooks, ravines and waterfalls. The park is considered to be the oldest protected biosphere in Mexico.

The park's name, Desierto de los Leones, is largely due to the Carmelite monastery situated just north of its center. Carmelite monks called their residences “deserts”. But the exact origin of “de los Leones” is not known. The first monastery complex was constructed between 1606 and 1611. By 1711, this structure had deteriorated greatly. It was demolished and a new one was built in its place adjoining just south of the original complex.

By the end of the 18th century, the cold, damp weather and increasingly frequent visitors forced the monks to move their monastery to Tenancingo in 1801. The monastery was declared a national monument on 16 May 1937. The 18th-century structure has a number of areas that have been restored and opened to the public. In addition to the old monastery, the park attracts visitors for the nature that surrounds the complex. The park offers activities such as day camping, overnight camping, hiking, and mountain biking. [Wiki]

More images of this beautiful place : Desierto de los Leones I - Desierto de los Leones II and Summertime   and Summertime II

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Sunday, August 19, 2012

El Caballito

(iPhoneography)

Horse Head or The Little Horse (sculpture by Sebastian)
In the background Caballito Tower - SAT Office (IRS) [Taxes Office]



Sebastián (born Enrique Carbajal on November 16, 1947) is an artist based in Mexico, and is considered the country's foremost living sculptor. His smaller scale work includes jewelry, sacristies, garden sculptures, and painting. However, he is most known for his monumental structures constructed in iron or concrete, which decorate cities throughout the world, from San Antonio, Texas to Osaka, Japan.

Sebastián was born in the small town of Santa Rosalía de Camargo, Chihuahua, Mexico on November 16, 1947. He lived in Chihuahua until he began studying in the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City in 1964.
When studying in Mexico City, he survived by working at restaurants and buying clothing to sell it for a profit in Chihuahua. He studied in the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (National School of Plastic Arts) at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Persisting with deep appreciation for Henry Moore and Pablo Picasso, he won first place in the 1965 Annual Exposition of the National Plastic Arts School at UNAM.
In 1968 Sebastián had his own show featuring his ceramic work in the Museum of Art of Ciudad Juárez. After completing his formal studies he continued his work with short-lived schools and movements such as the "Salon Independiente". He put on his second individual exposition, where he displayed ostensibly simple paper carton works that he called "desplegables" (folders). These seemingly small works became the base of ideas for his later monumental works made with tons of iron and concrete.  [Wiki]

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Friday, August 17, 2012

Moon Hooch I

Wenzl McGown and Mike Wilbur, saxophones; James Muschler, drums.
Spawned from New York City’s subways in 2010, the busking trio Moon Hooch seamlessly blends house, dubstep, drum & bass and jazz into a style aptly coined “Cave music.” Moon Hooch creates frenzied foot-stomping bashes with nothing more than two saxophones, drums, and the occasional contrabass clarinet. Their self-funded, self-released debut album ratifies the wild praise heaped upon them by a dedicated–and rapidly growing–following. [Discover Jazz]

THE CURRENT CHALLENGE
Fri Aug 17, 2012
This week's challenge:
'Summer Colors'.

-   Take 5 and Enjoy!   -

⇑ - Soon...  a video of that great session! - 06/28/2012 - ⇓


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Thursday, August 16, 2012

Liquid Eyes

Memory demands an image.  ~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell

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Wednesday, August 15, 2012

The Triumph of Marius


The Triumph of Marius
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo  (Italian, Venice 1696–1770 Madrid)
Date: 1729.  Medium: Oil on canvas. Dimensions: Irregular painted surface, 220 x 128 5/8 in. (558.8 x 326.7 cm)

The subject of this triumphal procession is identified by a Latin inscription at the top of the canvas from the Roman historian Lucius Anneus Florus (Epitome of Roman History, 36:17): "The Roman people behold Jugurtha laden with chains." The African king Jugurtha is shown descending a hill before his captor, the Roman general Gaius Marius. A youth beats a tambourine while other figures carry booty, including a bust of the mother goddess Cybele. The thirty-year-old Tiepolo included his portrait among the figures at the left. The procession was held on January 1, 104 B.C.

The picture—a masterpiece of Tiepolo's early maturity—is from a series of ten canvases painted about 1725–29 to decorate the main room of the Ca' Dolfin, Venice. [The Metropolitan Museum of  Art]



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Tuesday, August 14, 2012

The Sax Player


Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop. - Lewis Carroll

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Monday, August 13, 2012

Tenacious


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Sunday, August 12, 2012

Break


Photography is nothing -- it's life that interests me. - Henri Cartier-Bresson

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Saturday, August 11, 2012

Rainy Afternoon



[iPhoneography]

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Friday, August 10, 2012

Flor



THE CURRENT CHALLENGE
Fri Aug 10, 2012
This week's challenge:
'Raw'.


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Thursday, August 9, 2012

Into The Woods


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Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Games


Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, ever hundredth of a second. - Marc Riboud

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Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Marketing

iPhoneography

“One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death.” 
~ Carlos Fuentes

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Sunday, August 5, 2012

Snap Shots



iPhoneography
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Saturday, August 4, 2012

Noteless Staves



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Friday, August 3, 2012

Imminent Storm

Chelsea Piers. Manhattan, NYC - June 2012

Joy in looking and comprehending is Nature's most beautiful gift. ~ Albert Einstein

« Le plus beau sentiment du monde, c’est le sens du mystère. Celui qui n’a jamais connu cette émotion, ses yeux sont fermés. » ~ Albert Einstein  
[ The best feeling in the world, it is the sense of mystery. He who has never experienced this emotion, his eyes are closed. ]


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Thursday, August 2, 2012

Africam Safari VII (Last)

... adieu and some reflections :

Animals give me more pleasure through the viewfinder of a camera than they ever did in the crosshairs of a gunsight.  And after I've finished "shooting," my unharmed victims are still around for others to enjoy.  I have developed a deep respect for animals.  I consider them fellow living creatures with certain rights that should not be violated any more than those of humans.  ~Jimmy Stewart

            It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.  ~Henrik Ibsen

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution.  Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.  ~Thomas A. Edison

Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out.  Of all the creatures ever made [man] is the most detestable.  Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice.  He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.  ~Mark Twain

The indifference, callousness and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering in animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of the human spirit.  All education should be directed toward the refinement of the individual's sensibilities in relation not only to one's fellow humans everywhere, but to all things whatsoever.  ~Ashley Montague

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Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Africam Safari VI




9 young elephants find new home in Mexican zoo
June 11, 2012

PUEBLA, Mexico (AP) — It was the stuff of a major film studio's next animation project: Nine African baby elephants orphaned after their parents were poached, but then miraculously rescued to a wild game park in Latin America. In the highlands of central Mexico, pee wee pachyderms the size of Volkswagen Beetles could wander around, wide-eyed as they munched on tortillas and donned sombreros in their new home.
Except that the government of Namibia, where they came from, says it didn't happen that way.
The nine elephants that made a big media splash last week lumbering off a cargo plane, on their way to a reserve in Puebla, were the result of a commercial sale. Despite reports to the contrary, the creatures had never been truly, fully free. They also aren't babies, but youngsters ranging from 4 to 10 years old, said Boas Erkki, deputy director at the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism.
The elephants were sold by the original owner, a farm, to the Namib Game Services private reserve and their mothers were not poached, Erkki told The Associated Press on Monday. The Namib Game Services sold the animals because they didn't have enough space to keep them, he said.
Even without the poachers, the elephants had a pretty good tale. They spent 24 hours in tight quarters as they flew over the Atlantic in a chartered jet. They had stopovers in Brazil and Chile. Then a two-hour truck drive to the city of Puebla before they arrived at their new home at Africam Safari, a 900-acre wildlife preserve whose name is a combination of Africa and the family name of the park's owner — Frank Carlos Camacho.
The delivery was the brainchild of Camacho, whose preserve is just south of Mexico City.
The unlikely African acquisition began when Debbie Olson, director of the International Elephant Foundation based outside Fort Worth, Texas, learned of nine young elephants in Namibia that needed a new home. She put out the word to her board of directors, which includes Camacho.
Camacho had always planned to add a couple of elephants to his wildlife preserve, where ostriches, lemurs, giraffes, zebras and monkeys roam in spacious containment areas to the delight of visitors.
What appeared to be a marketer's dream come true soon soured, when the government of Namibia complained that news reports wrongly said the elephants were orphaned and Camacho was rescuing them.
Camacho denies telling journalists that the elephants' parents were killed by poachers. But he did use the term "rescue" and that has proved controversial.
"In no way can this export be considered to be a 'rescue' mission, nor were these elephants orphans," said a Namibian government press release. "These young elephants were in good condition at the time of leaving Namibia and were not at risk of being destroyed by this Ministry."
Camacho said he learned that the private preserve was offering up the animals because it was too small to maintain them. In May, Camacho flew to central Namibia to check out his little herd, and discovered they already had become a family.
The oldest elephant, about 10, is the size of a minivan and had been nicknamed "Big Boy" — clearly the leader of the pack. The youngest, "Chico," or "Little Boy," is 4 years old. The pack included one other male and six females.
The next step, getting them to Mexico, turned out not to be that difficult. Camacho successfully navigated through two government bureaucracies. He chartered a plane big enough for his precious cargo.
Getting them onto the plane was another matter.
"It would have been much harder if they were adults," said Cecilia Geiger, a spokeswoman for Africam Safari. The elephants obediently boarded on their own, with Big Boy leading the smaller ones up a ramp and into the cargo bay, where the elephants were put in big crates.
Camacho accompanied them, listening to the elephant chatter as they crossed the Atlantic.
"We could all feel that they had a special connection," he said.
During a reporter's visit Friday, the herd looked happy enough, playing outside in a huddle near a muddy watering pool, tossing sand with their skinny trunks, their white tusk buds barely visible. Eventually, those buds could grow into 8-foot long tusks. The elephants will grow two times their current size.
"Elephants can do just fine on their own as long as people can substitute for other elephants," said Ted Friend, professor of animal behavior at Texas A&M University. In captivity, a human trainer usually takes on the necessary role of the female elephant, he said.
As for the nine elephants at Camacho's zoo, Friend sees no problem with their environment. "It'll be a little different than what they would have had in the wild, but in a situation where they're controlled by people, then I don't see a problem."
While the Namibian government said the elephants are not orphans, and did not grow up in the wild, their origins remain a mystery. It isn't clear where the elephants' parents are, or even if any of the nine are related.
There is only one way to find out, Camacho said. He pointed at his elephants.
"You have to ask them," he said.
___
Associated Press writer Armando Montano reported this story in Puebla and Emoke Bebiak reported from Johannesburg, South Africa. [The Examiner]

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