Shooting from the Hip in Rio

This week’s Friday (My Town) Shoot-out topic is Shooting from the hip.  I found this fun, (really) trying something different with the camera, but I didn’t really have success with it.  I didn’t get even one photo that I would call interesting or beautiful.  I will still share a few with you because if nothing else I am a good sport. 

I found that I couldn’t shoot while walking – therefore shooting from the hip, being spontaneous, or secretive or on the sly.  I would have to stop and move my body around so I didn’t take a picture of my leg or of the ground and stand still making sure the camera was quiet so the photo wasn’t blurred.  Also except for the fact that all of them are at an angle they are of the same topics I would shoot normally – looking through the eye piece.  Is this the way it is supposed to be?   I finally turned the camera upside down so I could keep my finger on the ‘click’ button and still keep the camera steady.  Not really shooting from the hip -

Last Sunday, Camillo and I walked to the hippy square and I clicked the camera all along the way.  The title of this post could be ‘to the market and home’  a walk along the Rua.  Shooting at this angle does give you a better sense of the context of the photo.  Some sky, some sidewalk, a little broader photo than just the straight up shot.  hop you enjoying walking to the market on a hot Sunday morning. 

    

 

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In Rio – twisted, In Friburgo–contorted

This week I am in Rio and my usual Friday My Town Shoot-Out photos focus on the town were I am on Fridays.  But my first couple of photos, taken in Nova Friburgo last week, works perfectly for the Contorted topic.  And then there are a few I took this week in Rio are quite twisted.  
This first photo shows the layer of mud still covering the yard of a house down the street from a major slide.  The house was undamaged, at the least the front where I was standing it looked unscathed but the front yard shows only one small area of hope, of green.   I should go back and see how much green is poking up through the mud. 
The second photo is of only one of the many cars littering this slide area.  Its contorted frame attest to the ride it took down the hill, through homes and apartments, riding a fast current and being battered by large boulders also along for the ride.
definitely contorted.
 
I try to focus on the beauty around me.  Last week I received several comments on framing about the beautiful that surrounds me where I live.  Yes there is beauty around the lagoa, in Ipanema, in the Botanical gardens, but  I would hate to have you come here to visit and during the drive from the airport to Ipanema think, ‘she lied, I want to go home mow’.  Rio is a typical super-city with miles and miles of substandard housing, apartment building and businesses that haven’t been cleaned nor maintained for years, blights.     Over the years I’ve learned or should say, I’ve taught my eye to see only the beauty.  So here we are back on the beautiful side with twisted beauty in Rio.
            
I spent some time trying to find the name of these trees but had no success.  They are small trees with smooth multicolored bark.  Camillo thinks they were imported from Asia.  If anyone has a guess let me know.  I have talked before of the Ficus (fig) trees that line the streets of Ipanema, they also are along the lagoa.  Big trees, roots running from high branches down into the ground, not because I find it beautiful but interesting, here is one last twisty photo of those roots as they run unhampered along the ground.
  

Rio framed by the sea and the mountains

It is hard to believe that Friday has come around again so soon.  Today, we traveled from Friburgo to Rio, then lunch out, grocery shopping and, of course, our nap in the heat of the afternoon, so this day went by way to quickly and I find myself writing this post almost at midnight – but still on Friday. 
I have always taken photos with distant points framed by trees, or flowers, or contrasting colors - enhancing, adding perspective, diverting my eye from the too wide horizon.  Framing creates a space and context.  Here are a few framed photos of the Lagoa in Rio.
  
  
 
And just so you don’t forget – the view from the veranda in Nova Friburgo.  Taken this week at sunrise – the clouds in the valley obscuring the slides on the hills across the valley.

Collections -

Except photos and more photos, I really don’t collect or have a collection from Brasil.  But during our years in the USA, one of the things that Camillo and I enjoyed doing on Sundays was ‘antiquing’.  We would go to one of our favorite antique markets, stroll up and down the isles, and just find things.  Things that reminded us of earlier years; when our respective children were young, when I was young (er!).   We found things we thought beautiful and we filled our home with bits and pieces of family history that we had not accumulated together over a lifetime.   We made our house into a home.
When we finally packed up and left Houston for Brasil.  Camillo said, ‘sell it all’.  He, after all, had a home already set up and complete here.  Then he left for Brasil, and left the sorting and clearing and garage selling to me.  There were a few things I could not let go of; about two large crates worth.  I guess you could call these things my collection ‘of home.’
Once our goods arrived and Camillo saw what I’d not left behind, he had a room added to the house and a cabinet made for me to keep my collection in.  So here are the things I brought from home that keeps my room downstairs feeling like home. Over the past two years the space has changed, been moved around and pieces of furniture made here have been added.  My cabinet is now full. 
 
Not often can you find affordable tea pots that are complete sets so I found over time similar patterns, and for my sandwich plates colored depression glass.  I always intended to have a high tea, serving finger sandwiches and scones, and cakes but that was one of my ‘someday’ projects.
 
   English circa 1895?

Do you remember these?  Flower vases from the 50s – she doesn’t have a chip of paint and has both her earrings..... 
and scattered around the room ....
  
   
 
Home.

Someday I will.

Someday I’ll vacation on an island and swim the reefs.  Someday I will write a book.  One day I will learn to play drums.  Someday I will have a show of my photos.  Someday I’ll learn the clarinet.  Someday I will climb a Volcano.  Someday I will learn another language – sometime, on another day, some day.  When using someday we think we mean, “at some future day or time”, but we really mean is  “... ones not specified or known, OR a certain indefinite or unspecified ..... Some Day I Will. 
Yesterday was my first time into the city of Nova Friburgo since the mudslides on January 12.  After lunch at our favorite by-the-kilo restaurant, I walked over to the Praça Suspiro intending to see for myself the Igreja de Santo Antônio shown in so many international newscasts last week.  Over the years I have taken only a few photos of the exterior of this graceful little church but never really getting a good photo because of the cars and horses, and carts, vendors selling everything from religious icons to potato chips, and the PEOPLE always in the area blocking the ‘perfect’ photo.  I promised myself the ‘someday’ I would go early in the morning or late in the day, I would take photos from all angles, I would explore, I would.... someday.... go inside. 
Two weeks ago this Praça was clogged with mud and debris – yesterday the air was thick with sinus clogging dust but workers had swept the stones nearly clean and were preparing to wash the remaining dust away.
If one photo is worth a thousand words – is 25 photos worth a whole book?  

The first 5 rows below are before and after – taken as close to the same angle as possible.....  then yesterday’s photos – don’t put off until yesterday what you wanted to do someday. 

	from a distance the church appears unhurt.
	this tells the story better than any words.  A thin layer of soil sets atop the granite basement.
	where the soil and trees from above rushed through the middle of the church.