Sun-Starved

Our Vitamin-D deficient adventures in Seattle (and elsewhere)

Nostalgia and San Francisco

Nostalgia: a yearning for the past. In the present? I believe most photographs are made of nostalgia.

In San Francisco, you stroll and walk over, underneath or besides magic on a regular basis. I have never lived there but I miss it. I long for it. It's a city that mesmerized me by its delicate sense of distinctiveness in individual details, like no other place in the United States has. 

I found that magic lingering in a language I heard a passerby speaking, but I didn't recognize. I found it in a palace in the middle of the city, very close to the red bridge. It might slip into your bag of Mexican groceries or come in the form of blood orange sorbet. It might be in the menu at the Nicaraguan restaurant or left abandoned on a corner of your seat at the streetcar. It might taste like apricot preserve or smell like sand and water or a cala lily. It can come to you in many different costumes. 

I know it sounds like the fog sirens that whisper to the city all day.

In San Francisco, you want to outline the houses you walk by using just your fingers. You want to climb the palm trees in Dolores Park. Every inch of the city is alive in its asphalt, people and forms. After all, it's a place where its voices, tragedy, hope, and pride are weaved together into a beautiful, intricate map.

I wanted the glass in my lens to spill ink and produce words as fine as the imagery around me. But I ended up with images I later tinted with a dollop of golden hour.

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About T-Rex dinosaurs and sharing mixtapes with friends

I have been in San Francisco for the past week, exploring the city and falling in love with it.  And while in here, I embarked in a 28 photos x 28 days project with my photography school from Caracas, Roberto Mata Taller de Fotografia, where I started my photography studies back in 2004.   This entry is to show one of the photos I made for Day Uno. The assignment was to find a "T-Rex" (yes, the dinosaur!) and photograph it. Fortunately, my very talented and good friend, artist Ytaelena Lopez, has a piece with a cigar-loving, black and white and kick-ass T-Rex I couldn't pass or resist. Here's the photo of said gentleman.

 

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Also, and thanks to Ryan, I was introduced to Mixtape.me.  Here, people can create playlists and share them with the world.  Because Ryan and I are married thanks to music (we met back in 2007 on Last.fm), I now have a stronger love for it. Sharing music gives me a pleasure I can barely describe. Let's leave that to a small, 6-track mix tape I created to share with people.

Enjoy!

 

 

Ryan @ Last.fm (he listens to really great music, no wonder I ended marrying him, right?)

Valentina @ Last.fm