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Part 17 of 50: Tara Translates Our Way Out of a Jam

This is part seventeen in a series of blogs on my recent artistic adventures in Mexico.

The secluded beach cove at Playas Las Palmas had become quite the popular shooting location as ZoeFest progressed during the week. That was both good and bad. It was good because it’s always fascinating to see what other photographers and models do with the same location. Quite varied and everyone had their own styles they brought to the party. Bad because, as the week went on, we were no longer under the radar.

Todos Santos, Mexico is a very traditional kind of place. It had seen it’s influx of non-natives from all parts of the world in the last couple of decades which had brought about some changes, hopefully not affecting the tranquil beauty or culture in a negative way. But impacting it nonetheless. And when a group of artists sets up camp in an environment such as this as we did during ZoeFest, we were very aware to try not to impact both the environment and culture in a way that would be undesirable to the locals. The old photographers adage of,

“Leave no trace. Leave what you find.”

Tara at Playa las Palmas
Tara at Playa las Palmas

It probably applies to many other activities that involve exploring anywhere that you’re not a local, but we photographers have adopted it as our own.

Playas Las Palmas presented a tricky dilemma. While the beach itself was not private property, getting to the beach from land did involve crossing through what was private property. Something none of us knew when we arrived. When I had photographed Ella Rose on one of the first days, we were literally the only ones there. Not a person to be seen along the coastline as far as you could see.

But by the time the lovely Tara Tree and I decided to return there, days later, we had started to hear stories from others in the group of, while not exactly what could be termed shakedowns to continue shooting there, but definitely encounters that made it a little uncertain whether it would be possible to continue to shoot there.

We decided to go anyway and see what happened. When we arrived at the end of the dirt road, as close as we could drive to the beach, we spotted Robert and Ella Rose already heading down the path ahead of us. The cove was a fairly large area and I wasn’t concerned we’d be tripping over each other or in each other’s shots.

Tara at Playa las Palmas
Tara at Playa las Palmas

Tara and I walked through the little tropical forest path before reaching the beach and the glorious late afternoon sun that would be setting in a few hours. I had photographed Ella Rose at the same place in the morning light, completely different from the light now.

This time, as we approached the beach area, Tara and I spotted a couple of official looking men a couple of hundred meters away. It appeared they were inspecting something, pointing and walking a few meters, then pointing away and walking off in that direction. While Robert and Ella were off beginning to shoot in a much more secluded rocky area away from where the men were looking, Tara and I were much more in the open.

We decided to sit and wait and enjoy the ocean view for a while. We talked about our art and our travels and although we were both anxious to begin making photographs, the inspector men continued to do whatever it was they were doing for nearly another hour. Finally they got into their truck and headed off out of sight. And the sun was really getting good by that point. Perfect!

Tara at Playa las Palmas
Tara at Playa las Palmas

I did really enjoy the brief downtime with Tara. It seemed like I was doing so much rushing around from place to place that even though I was really enjoying myself, it was nice to just stop for a while and relax with such a lovely human as Tara is. She has a wonderful heart. I certainly felt like a better person after our little break.

We began to get ready as Tara laid down in a little stream that had formed over a little sandbar near the mouth of the cove. This time I remembered Ella’s suggestion for me to make sure I didn’t leave any of my own footprints near the delicate sand ripple patterns formed by the waves over the last few hours. It looked like it could be rock with the sun reflecting off of it, but it was definitely sand. Gorgeous with Tara in the middle of it all.

It was really a beautiful time of day. Perfect light.

Tara and I spotted some interesting divots in the sand off to the side of the stream where the tide had been higher earlier in the day and we thought it might be an interesting thing to put Tara in them, her beautiful curves mirroring the curves of the sand. We tried a few different ones until it was difficult to find Tara at all in them, blending in like a chameleon.

I suppose if the Pope was looking to hang one of my nude photographs in his Vatican dining room, one of these would be the least likely of all of my work to raise a holy eyebrow. I’ll have to ask him the next time I see him on Facebook chat.

Tara at Playa las Palmas
Tara at Playa las Palmas

Meanwhile, back at Playa Las Palmas, the sun was just about ready to hide behind one of the two cliffs that bookended the cove. Tara moved back into the stream and started to pose. She heard some splashing and turned to see me running back and forth in the stream.

“What are you doing?!”, she laughed in her beautiful Irish brogue.

Whah tahr yah doe ehn?!

I stopped in mid gazelle leap and laughed along with her.

“Um… I’m trying to find where the beam of sunlight is best behind you,” I sheepishly said. “You know… because I know you’re holding your pose and I don’t want  to have you hold it too long.”

“Alright,” she laughed again, that beautiful laugh. “Just checking.”

Ohl-rate. Joost chay-kehn. (or something like that.)

She posed, I scampered and splashed back and forth. The hardest part was focusing looking straight into the sun, but I got it eventually.

Tara at Playa las Palmas
Tara at Playa las Palmas

Out of breath and a wee bit tired of looking so silly, we moved over to an area of sand I had noticed the last time I was here at the beach. There were these dark dramatic lines of sand that had washed up along a slightly drier area of the beach. Not a footprint to be found and quite striking.

I had Tara lay down in between a few of them and made of few more photographs of her as the shadows grew in the setting sun. If you look closely, you can see one of my errant footprints as I got a bit too close when directing Tara on which way to lay. We’ll call it a bit of a self-portrait, that one.

I moved around her to compose the length of long shadow her curves were now creating in the sand. Beautiful.

Done with that set, I wanted to try to incorporate the beautiful stream carving in the sand again from a slightly different vantage point. I had been shooting with my short 50mm prime lens up to this point and decided to switch to my longer 100mm prime for a different look. It meant Tara was further away from me, but I really loved how it compressed the sunlight shining off of the sand as the stream had carved through it.

Tara at Playa las Palmas
Tara at Playa las Palmas

Due to the distance, Tara was a bit confused. “What do you want me to do?”, she yelled to me over the sounds of the crashing waves.

“Something like this,” as I pantomimed stretching my arms out one way and the other.

Happily, she understood my silly posing reference and improved upon it greatly. Another model who can take questionable direction and make it into something wonderful.

I was really happy with what we were doing when Tara suddenly stopped and began walking toward me.

“There’s a man coming toward us,” she stage whispered.

“Is he close?”, I said without turning.

“Getting closer.”

With my back toward the unknown man, trying to keep myself between him and Tara who was trying as casually as possible to put her dress wrap back on, we tried to look as normal as possible. I began to take photographs of the rest of beach area, in an effort to look like a pair of normal tourists out for a walk on the beach.

“Where is he now?”, I quietly asked.

“Right behind you.”

Oh. Damn.

I turned to the man, and said the only appropriate thing I could think of at the moment.

“Hola, señor.”

“Hola,” he said back.

He wasn’t very menacing or anything like that. Just standing there within a few feet of us as I snapped a few more tourista photos of the ocean.

In my head, I was asking all the things I wished I could confer with Tara on. Does he want money? Has he called the authorities? Is he the authorities?

Before I could figure out what to do, I heard Tara begin speaking to him in Spanish. A few questions and he began to give a few answers.

I forgot how fluent in Spanish Tara was. After the translation with las tortugas (the turtles) just the day before.

As with my brush with Los Federales with Meghan yesterday morning, I really tried to follow the conversation as best I could with my limited Spanish. The good thing was, this conversation Tara was having with the man sounded casual, not argumentative in any way.

And then I felt this wash of regret start to fill me. Not about perhaps being in some kind of trouble, but forgetting my first rule when traveling abroad. It was rude of me to wait so long to address him. A far too common American thing. I was in his country and now Tara was making it right.

“Yo soy de Chicago,” I offered at one point. It helped.

Tara would speak a few sentences to him and he would respond and Tara would fill in the blanks to me as I nodded.

He was in charge of watching the property we had crossed to get to the beach and he was checking up on us. He waved his arm over the area between the beach and where we had parked our car. All of that land was owned by a man he worked for. It was okay that we were here, but he wanted us to be aware that he was letting us be here for the moment. More than fair enough.

Tara at Playa las Palmas
Tara at Playa las Palmas

We asked him if we should leave and he told us we didn’t have to this time. He continued to tell us the story of his family and the family he worked for and how sometimes people would pay them to hold lavish weddings here. I could see how that would be an amazing setting.

I could see three dogs waiting on the other side of the ocean stream.

“¿Sus tres perros?”, I asked. Your three dogs?

Sí, mis perros,” he smiled. And then he said something about the dogs I didn’t quite understand, but I nodded anyway.

This was better. This is how I should have handled our meeting from the beginning.

We talked a bit more and said our goodbyes. He walked away and I turned to thank Tara for being such an amazing translator. Without her, her warm spirit and excellent communication skills, our interaction wouldn’t have gone nearly as well. I really don’t think he wanted money in the end, just a bit of respect that perhaps other touristas hadn’t given him. Just to let us know we were on someone else’s property when we came here.

We collected our things and started to head back toward the palm forest path, when I saw a sign near the edge of the beach that had been confusing me all week. It basically translated to Private Property. No Entry. What I couldn’t figure out until now was why it was facing the beach. In other words, you wouldn’t see the front of it until you were on the beach, after you had crossed through the private property. Perhaps there needed to be another sign closer to where we parked the cars. Then again, perhaps it really wasn’t a big deal, until people started to take advantage of it.

My shoot with Tara ended up being a bit shorter than some of the others, but it was a great experience and we did collaborate to make some incredible photographs. Plus it was nice to spend a bit of time with her just getting to know her a little better. One of my favorite moments in Todos Santos.

And it reminded me to be a better visitor next time.

More to come.

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Part 5 of 50: The Ocean and Ella Rose

This is part five in a series of blogs on my recent artistic adventures in Mexico.

In preparing for ZoeFest, we all would have to find our way up the Pacific Coast of the Baja Penisula to Todos Santos from the Cabo San Lucas International Airport. That meant renting cars. Two days before I was to fly out of Chicago, I was checking all of my paperwork, passport, flights, maps, etc., when I clicked on the email link to my car reservation.

Confirmed, November 23rd, one compact car at Hertz, San Jose, California.

Whoops.

I should never book important things at 3 o’clock in the morning. Scramble, scramble. No Hertz at the Cabo airport. Hmmm.

Avis! They try harder, right? Avis it is!

A few minutes later, I had a new car reservation, this time in the proper country. And since I want my travels to be as drama free as possible, I alway sign up for the insurance. All of the insurance. Insurance for the car, the people in the car. Everything. It would prove to be a wise decision before my adventure was over. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Having never been to Zoefest before, I was under the impression that I would rent the car, drive myself and my new friends to Todos Santos, park the car and do very little driving until it was time to return to the airport. Perhaps a waste of rental car money to leave a car sitting for days, but I didn’t see any way around it.

Ha!

The reality of it was even though we were all mostly walking distance from each other, walking even a mile or two in the mid-day Mexican heat was a bit too much for most of us. I found that having a car was essential to get where I wanted to be, when I wanted to be there without lugging a backpack full of camera gear along the way.

Ella Rose at Playa Las Palmas
Ella Rose at Playa Las Palmas

And even though Todos Santos seemed to be a relatively safe place in Mexico these days, we’d all read the news. You never know.

I became a bit of a model taxi for the rest of the adventure. Any time I would leave one of the hotels, I’d always check to see if anyone needed a ride to their next shoot location or back to their respective hotels. Most of the time I ended up with a carload of lovely models. Another opportunity to get to know everyone a bit better.

Plus there were the runs to the store. Eggs for Brooke, cigarettes for Rebecca, things like that. I was going anyway for myself and it seemed the decent thing to do was to ask, considering how hard everyone was working and I was one of the few with a car. I mean, we were having the best time, but it was work as well. Good art is work. Make no mistake.

Early the following morning on day two after my usual coffee and chat with Mel and Scott, this time punctuated by maneuvering with my coffee cup around several lovely nude models already shooting in the fountain near the veranda (I know, brutal thing to face first thing in the morning), I jumped in my car and drove off to pick up Ella Rose at the Hotelito.

We headed off in the direction of Playa Las Palmas on the Pacific Ocean with vague instructions on actually how to get there. You see, in Todas Santos, most directions include the phrase, “…A few kilometers further, there’s a dirt road off to your right…” I found that actually spotting that little dirt road as you’re doing 60kmph past it, is a bit of an art in itself. It usually only took me three tries to do it.

Ella Rose at Playa Las Palmas
Ella Rose at Playa Las Palmas

After a few passes of kilometer marker 57 and a couple of U-turns, we finally found ourselves on the dirt road we agreed was the correct one. Ella and I took our best guesses as to which of the various forks in the road to continue down until the road just sort of stopped and we got out to walk the rest of the way.

The area of Todos Santos is a bit of an oasis in the Baja desert. It can be dry and desolate one minute and lush and green the next. Ella and I continued our walk that we hoped would eventually lead to the Pacific Ocean, through a large shady palm forest with giant trunks and tall branches above.

We continued to talk about life and art as we meandered down what seemed to be a path. Ella has a lovely voice as well, being from the U.K. and it occured to me that one phrase you never ever hear is, “I just LOVE your American accent.” It’s true. The Aussies have beautiful accents. Ditto for the Irish, French and Spanish. Lyrical. Pleasing to the ears. Not so much with the Americans.

Meanwhile, I was trying desperately to make mental notes of various things along our path so we could find our way back to the car. I’ll remember that tree stump, right? That little spiky plant in the middle of the path before we have to make a left? Sure, we’ll remember!

A bit more walking and we reached the edge of the palm forest and… there it was! One of those views you usually only see in pictures and never with your own eyes. We stopped for a moment, jaws unhinged to take it in. There were little rocky cliffs off to either side of the beautiful, long, curving beach cove. And we were the only people there. Completely stunning.

Ella Rose at Playa Las Palmas
Ella Rose at Playa Las Palmas

Ella and I walked carefully into a little stream that spilled into the ocean, she reminding me to be careful not to leave footprints on the pristine sand where we might want to make our first photographs. Good call. I have mentioned before that all of the models were very intelligent and exceptional at what they did, right?

I spent the next few hours with Ella jumping, standing, spinning into so many graceful and beautiful poses in such a lovely environment that it was really beyond what I could have hoped for. I got into the water, carefully laying down in the stream or on my knees in the ocean, desperately trying to make sure my camera never submerged.

A couple of times with the waves rolling in behind me, shooting Ella near the shoreline, she would occasionally yell out, “WAVE!”, just in time for me to raise my camera over my head as the waves knocked me over. It’s fun to play with nature as long as you keep your camera dry. Cameras and lenses simply hate salt water.

After a few hours, covered in sand, we happily walked back to the car, past the little spiky plant in the middle of the path and past that tree stump. It had been a wonderful morning of creating.

As always, more to come.

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Part 2 of 50: The “Highway” to Todos Santos

This is part two in a series of blogs on my recent artistic adventures in Mexico.

Mexico Highway 1 turns into Federal Highway 19 in Cabo at the very Southern tip of the Baja Peninsula and heads North along the Pacific Ocean towards Todos Santos. In about five or ten years, it will be a breathtakingly lovely drive. Now however, Highway 19 is under construction and barely a road for much of the drive, let alone an actual highway. It’s definitely not a drive you want to make after dark. So as tempted as we were to stop and grab a bite in Cabo in the late afternoon, Joris, Ella Rose and I decided to keep moving to make it to Todos Santos while it was still light out.

It turned out to be an excellent decision. Baja is very dry. A passing vehicle can kick up a sandstorm that reduces visibility to the dial on your radio. Unless you have your windows open, then you may not even be able to make that out. I felt a great responsibility to deliver my new friends unscathed to our destination and so I was very focused as we navigated the hilly blind curves and occasional dog or cow crossing in front of us.

It will be a quick drive up to Todos Santos once Federal Highway 19 is no longer a dirt road, however the drive from the airport ended up taking about two hours. The good news was that it gave the three of us plenty of time to get to know each other. Joris had arrived from Pennsylvania but was originally from Belgium. Great guy and an extremely talented photographer. Ella Rose was a brilliant model from the U.K. who had flown in to Cabo after a brief trip around Mexico City before joining up with our group. Her work was equally stunning.

Ella Rose at Playa Las Palmas
Ella Rose at Playa Las Palmas

It was the perfect way to begin the adventure, we three well traveled artists with ten days of creating in front of us. We discussed where we had been, life, art and the travel time actually seemed shorter than it was.

I should stop and explain that this photography artist retreat that Zoe Wiseman had created is actually an annual event, aptly called ZoeFest. This would be the tenth annual get together and therefore had the important moniker of ZoeFest X. It’s invitation only and I was already thrilled to be a part of such a group of amazing photographers and models. Past ZoeFests have taken place in Mission Beach, QLD, Australia, Flagstaff, Arizona, Three Rivers, California, Joshua Tree, California, Twenty Nine Palms, California and Woodstock, New York.

This year, our little group would take over four of the boutique hotels in Todos Santos. We had the run of all of them for shooting, discussing, sharing our work in nightly slide shows and of course enjoying the local food and drink. It really was an amazing set up.

Finally we reached the outskirts of Todos Santos and navigated through the streets as we approached the tiny downtown area. I had studied the town before I left thanks to Google Maps and even though many streets were unmarked, we managed to find the hotel where Ella Rose was staying, help her in with her backpack and make sure she was settled in.

Models have the most fascinating travel and packing habits. For many of them on this trip, Zoefest was only one of several shooting destinations that month. Even though ZoeFest was a fine art nude figure photography creation that didn’t require the models to bring much of anything in the way of clothes or shoes, some were loaded down with a suitcase or two of whatever they might need for their recent past and future modeling projects outside of our get together. All, however packed extremely efficiently. This was literally not their first time around the world for all of them.

The photographers as well were very frugal in their equipment packing. Back in Chicago, before I headed out my own door to the airport, I ended up with a pile of camera, lenses, film, support and lighting that didn’t make the final cut. Partly because what you pack you have to carry and partly because Mexico does have some pretty strict rules when it comes to what you can bring into the country before you get hit with all sorts of commercial taxes, fees and general shakedowns for tips to avoid any unpleasantness on your way in and out.

Discarded from my bag was my beautiful 1968 Hasselblad medium format camera and its accompanying lenses and film. Ditto for a small tripod and monopod as well as some small strobe lighting gear I sometimes use when shooting on location. I was incredibly tempted to bring some camera support that would allow me to move the camera if I decided to shoot motion with some of the models, but that would have really complicated my gear list and besides, I really wanted to get back to my still roots on this trip and concentrate on making beautiful single frames rather than motion photography. It would turn out to be the correct decision once again. Motion really wouldn’t have fit in with the spirit of the trip. Another time perhaps.

Instead, I ended up with an extremely small camera package that included the very bare minimum I thought I would need: My Canon 5D Mark II, 100mm and 50mm prime lenses and one 16-35mm zoom lens I almost left behind, but was so glad I brought. I threw my small Leica X1 in as well as a backup camera and my memory cards and that was it. For me, that’s less than I leave the studio with on most days.

Joris and I drove a few blocks to our own hotel and checked in. We had a couple of hours to unwind before the meeting party where the whole group would get together for the first time.

ZoeFest X was underway!

And speaking of the 16-35mm lens I almost left behind, the photograph above is of my car mate, the incredibly gifted Ella Rose, with whom I had the profoundly wondeful collaboration at a stunningly beautiful beach cove called Playa Las Palmas, a few miles outside of Todos Santos on the Pacific Ocean. Amazingly, completely deserted but for us. It was odd for me to photograph her with such a wide lens, but we decided to experiment with it, like she was on the edge of the world. A beautiful world we would all call home for an all too brief time.

More to come.