Colorful walls, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico

We just finished our first photo tour of San Cristóbal de las Casas. The group left yesterday and I’m finally finding time to process and post pictures from the week. It was a fun-filled week and the group learned many things from me, Nevada Wier and Holly Wylmeth. If you haven’t seen Holly’s work, visit her website. She has a great sense of humor in her work, and a new, fresh perspective on both travel and documentary photography.

My group always started out with very early mornings to capture the lamplit streets at twilight, and once the light became brighter, to seek out colors, textures, patterns, and, well, just about anything that captured our interest! We moved slowly through the streets, exploring.

This one street was pretty amazing for its wild colors. The light was soft that day, with broken clouds, and there were a few moments to create the balance of light and soft shadow that I wanted. But the image above was not true to how the scene really looked! (See below). As an artist, I chose to remove the water meters, but as an editorial photographer, I would keep them in. They are part of the reality of Mexico after all! I was drawn to the geometric shapes, the colors and textures of this scene. The circular meters are also shapes, and they were asymmetrically positioned so they work within the composition.

It’s one of those images that I will have to ‘sit’ with when I get home to decide which I like best. What do you think??