Phone-tography

Happy New Year everyone! Yes… it’s true… this is my FIRST blog post of 2013!

Well my friend Sherese has decided to come visit me here in Medellín for the month of February. We have had a lot of fun together getting to reconnect again. When coming down for the trip I told her to leave her PC and SLR Camera back in the States and that she could use mine while she was here. Instead, she has decided to take on a new task of seeing things from a new prospective by taking all of her photos with her cell phone which can be quite frustrating for a photographer – no zoom (well no REAL zoom)! However, it has been a great challenge for her and she has gotten me to take my phone out a bit and take some photos as well.

Make sure to check out Sherese’s blog – Life Defused. This blog post is about her own phone-tography as we took a 5 hour walking tour of Envigado (southern suburb of Medellín). Check out her other posts in order to inspire yourself!

Here is a look at our walk around the city via my cell phone lens. All photos taken with my Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket and edited with the Snapseed app.

ESPACIO: Office Photos

With their doors wide open and welcoming in Medellin entrepreneurs, ESPACIO is now in full gear.  They have many events planned including some of the top speakers from around Colombia. Here is a peak inside the office. I took the official photos for them which can also be found on their website.

ESPACIO Official Office Photos

ESPACIO Launch Party

Thursday evening – October 11, 2012 – was the official launch party of ESPACIO. It was a pure success! Hundreds of people showed up to help celebrate the new ESPACIO in Medellin. ESPACIO was prepared with a beer keg from 3 Cordilleras and a slew of red wine for everyone to enjoy. The founders took time out to do a quick presentation in order for everyone to know what ESPACIO was all about, in case they had not heard about it already. There is no question that on that night the heart of Parque Lleras was this launch party. In case you missed out on the celebration –  ZEFER FOTO was there to capture the energy throughout the entire night!

Weekend Getaways: La Pintada, Colombia

Every few weekends my girlfriend, some friends, and I get away from the city life. The greatest part about Medellin is that nearly every weekend you can drive into the mountains and enjoy the little towns nearby the city. There are an unbelievable amount of towns that lie within just a few hours of Medellin. One weekend we stayed at a friends “cabana” in La Pintada just a few hours south of Medellin. Here is a quick look at part of our trip.

Salsa Dance Performance

So today I thought I would share a personal post with everyone. A few weeks ago I was invited to dance with my girlfriend’s salsa group for a performance here in Medellin, Colombia. One of the members of the group is currently studying abroad in Italy for a year so they needed someone to perform in his place. I agreed and it turned out to be a great time. We were quite surprised by the size of the crowd when we arrived as it turned out to be a very large event held on a covered basketball court. We had a few worries about trying to spin on the concrete but in the end it didn’t turn out to be much of a problem.

Casino Salsa is a bit different because instead of just using couples it is done with a group of couples. The dance consists of switching partners  and dancing in a circle (rueda). In case anyone isn’t sure – I am the one with the beard 😉

After our performance the crowd cheered us on for an encore. We performed an extra number but it was all improved. Casino Salsa is a cuban style of salsa in which one person yells out the different moves (when it is not choreographed) and everyone follows in sync. It was hard to hear in this venue so the leader calling out the moves is also using hand signals for us to understand easier. So, here is the improved version!

aïta Launch Party

Last week I took some photos at the launch party for the new aïta clothing store in Medellin in the Centro Comercial Oviedo (Oviedo Mall). Aita is from Spain and this was their first location opened up inside Colombia. These photos were taken for Jack Magazine. Here is a look at a few of the photos. Click here to see the full collection of photos.

Gran Fiesta Salsera 2012

Last May the newest and most popular salsa academy of Medellin, Colombia, Academia Baila Latino, celebrated their 1 Year Anniversary with a huge event located on the top floor of the Dann Carlton Hotel which is considered the best hotel in the city. With a view of city and the energy of dancing all around there was fun to be had. Here is a look at some of the photos we captured throughout the night including the surprise engagement at the end of the night!

I must give a great deal of the photo credit to my friend and photographer Joseph Le. He was kind enough to help me out with the photos so that I could dance a bit as well! Special thanks to Joel Duncan Photography as well for capturing some great photos of the night which can be found here. If you love travel and photography make sure to follow his blog AdventureJo as well!

Uruguay

Day 21-23.

Viernes – Domigo (Fri – Sun). Oct 3-5, 2009.

This weekend I traveled to 2 different cities in Uruguay. The cities were about 2 hours apart from each other by bus but were completely different.

A group of 10 of us from the school took a ferry ride from Bs. As. over to Colonia, Uruguay.  We went out to lunch as soon as we got there and noticed that the service from the restuarnts were catered around toursits. They were extremely friendly and even willing to split the bill for us. While sitting outside we heard a car coming from down the street with extremely loud music. When the car passed we realized it had a massive speaker litterally mounted on top of the car for everyone to hear their music. I thought we were bad without loud music in the States but this was just unbelievable. It turns out that it is extremly common in the city thought. Throughout the visit we saw/heard about 10 cars with the same set up. The city however, was absolutely beautiful. It is a preserved like an old town and the residents are not allowed to change the front of their building in order to keep this preserved look. The entire town was very quiet and peaceful. It was a wonderful escape from the busy, bustling city of Bs. As. I noticed on the second day that every car yielding to any pedestrian and the cars never went over 20 mph or so. On top of that, there is not a single traffic light in the entire town. Talk about a laid back town!

On the 2nd day we jumped on a bus and rode over to the capitol in Montevideo. We arrived in the late afternoon and walked out to the park to see a parade going on. After the parade we walked for about an hour down the beach in to the sunset. It was beautiful and there were people everywhere. We ended up in the Old Town Center where we found a very posh restaurant for dinner. We all enjoyed an amazing dinner with some of the best food I have eaten so far in South America. We got tipsy off of a few bottles of red wine and then headed out to the bar for the night. We ended up arriving very early in the night (in regards to South American time standards) and there was not a single person in the bar.  To make up for this we all bought drinks and stood in a circle entertaining ourselves with some interesting dancing. Since the group consisted of people from about 5 different countries, we each represented our countries by showing off our dances from our respective countries. The bar owners were so amused with us that they decided to give us free drinks all night. The streets finally got croweded around 1am and so then we headed next door to the dance club. After dancing for hours we came home around 5am only to realize the next morning that it was Daylight Savings that night…so really we came home at 6am. Being extremly tired from the night before we ended up just sitting on the beach all day then we headed over to the port to catch our ferry ride back to Argentina.

Overall, the country was a very nice break from Argentina. The people are very nice and the exchange rate is ridiculous. $1USD = $22.5 pesos which made it fun trying to keep track of how much we were spending!