Michael L. Watson

Galleries: Architecture | Flora | Landscape | Waterscape | Shapes & Forms

As a child I would dream of climbing high peaks and having incredible adventures in some far off corner of the world.  Early on, climbing came naturally to me and I began to bring camera along as a way to document climbs and friends and soon found myself torn between two competing passions:  the desire to climb and photograph. 

After completing my masters in mathematics my desire to photograph  could no longer be held at bay.  Quickly I found that my style of photography was better suited to a larger camera so I bought a medium format and shortly after, traded that in for a large format 5x4 metal field camera.  The contemplative nature of the view camera and the high degree of perspective control offered suited me perfectly.

In retrospect, many of my adventures have constituted more than most would willingly chose to endure, but my reward has been in the beauty I've found and in the photographs I have brought back.  Many times I have not been the first person to visit some remote area but my sense of discovery is quite powerful none-the-less.  While the intent was and is to communicate with the viewer, my photography is both introspective and highly personal. 

Richard Groenewold

Galleries: Architecture | Landscape

What is today the beautiful ruins in Mexico, Guatemala, Belice and some other countries, was once a huge civilization called Maya. The Mayan civilization was most advanced in Architecture, Medicine, Astrology, Art, and even War. So how could they fell as a culture?

Because they were superstitious. They believed that Cuculcan, a God of them that promised to come back as a white man one day was back when the Spanish arrived. So they trusted the Spanish people. And they as all the other cultures in America at that time were betrayed.

Some people think that the Mayan culture was a death culture by the time in which the Spanish conquest was done. That is far from the truth.

Most of the Mayan cities were still alive and with a lot of activity on them, only some of them were abandoned. But the Spanish thought they were most abandoned because the Mayans when they saw the Spanish conquering the Aztecs, the bravest and strongest of all the cultures of the ancient Mexico, and after that they destroyed all their Temples to build where they were and with their own stones the Spanish Temples, they thought of covering with sand the Mayan temples, so they would look abandoned for the Spanish. So the Spanish wouldn’t end with all their culture. The Shamans (the magicians, doctors and astrologists) of the Mayan civilization told the people that the Spanish will leave alter few years, so it didn’t matter if they just abandon their cities for only a few years, and after that they could come back, leaving in every city a watchman of them who will watch the buried city while the Mayan people was away. This watchman is called an “Lushes”, and there are still Alushes in every Mayan zone. They are descendants of the Alushes that stood there almost 500 years ago. They only speak Mayan, which is still a language speaker in every Mayan town in Mexico and other countries.

Some other Mayan cities were not abandoned and they as the Spanish did with the Aztecs, and almost every huge civilization of that time was converted in a Spanish city, the Mayan temples buried, or destroyed, and with their same stones the new Spanish Churches were created. That is the case of what it is today Merida in Yucatán, Campeche, and all the cities surrounding this ones. Valladolid, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chetumal, and so on.

I had been photographing and studying from this culture in the last ten years, and it is so amazing that there are still 1500 Arqueological Mayan zones only in Mexico. With more than 20,000 of Mayan structures.

After the Spanish inquisition there was few information left of the Mayan World, al their books were burned, all their traces erased. Almost all the warriors, Shamans, and royalty from them killed. And what the Spanish left alive were the lower casts of the Mayan, that is why we today wonder why if the mayans were so little if the steps in the temples are so big. Well, the mayan were not short people. But after 300 years of inquisition, killing and burning. The Mayans left are the ones which were not a threat for the Spanish. And after the Spanish killed as many brave mayans as they could the mexicans in a war called “The Casts War”.

After the Independence of Mexico the mayans thought it was their time to reborn. But the Mestizos and Criollos (the spanish born in Mexico) didn´t agree with them.

So, today we have many Mayan towns, but the government don´t let them be the owners of the mayan cities. So what is it left for them. They are not Spanish, they are not treated like Spanish, they are Mayans, but they don´t want to fight again for their rights. They know what happened the last time they did. Where is the World taking them? To globalization? To extintion? I hope not, I really hope so.

Adonis Abril

Galleries: Architecture | Fauna | Landscape | Waterscape

I have always pursued my artistic endeavors through music and poetry. It wasn’t until I became passionate about outdoor activities from hiking to mountain climbing, where I learned to appreciate the natural beauty of the Earth, when I picked up my first camera. I fell in love with the intricacies of light and how it interacts with nature. I wanted a way to share the things I saw, the colorful display of light, the movement of the waves but words simply could not accomplish this.

I study the natural surroundings through perpetual contact and observation. The wilderness is something that draws my attention and engulfs my vision to capture fleeting moments in nature that we sometimes fail to notice, be that a small rock in the sand or the grand ocean in the horizon. I am drawn to both intricate and grand details in nature where I allow my eyes to lead me to a composition.

Equipment is irrelevant to my photography. I focus more on technique and composition than I do with cameras or lenses. I am just as comfortable using a 4x5 Large Format (fully manual) camera as I am with a full featured modern Digital SLR.

I strive to always let my viewers experience what I experience being in the wilderness and my images reflect this. I don’t digitally manipulate my images, granted digital manipulation is subject to individual interpretation. I don’t, for example, take objects from photo and replicate it on another. My processes and workflow resemble processes that photographers from yesteryears used prior to the advent of digital imaging.