MazReal: September 2010

While we are, as those Brits say, swanning around Europe with our hired Malay manservants carrying our bags, giving us sensual massages and lighting our opium pipes we will be showcasing sets of photographs taken within the last year in and around Mazatlán starting with El Chepe to Divisadero. Much like watching re-runs on the TV when the execs are two damn lazy to commission anything else. But these are fine original images.

El Chepe and The Copper Canyon.

If anyone reading this has not taken the El Chepe train from Los Mochis through the Copper Canyon it's about time you did. These images will give you a taste of the sights through the train window but they cannot convey the feeling of vertigo as the train moves upwards sometimes hugging vertiginous rock cliffs only holding onto two narrow rail lines.

What other train line in the world employs dapper stewards in waistcoats and dicky bows that match their moustaches?

A late night luxury bus took us to Los Mochis (on which the camera gear fell off the overhead rack onto the head of our sleeping assistant causing a river of blood and screams. The driver raised the music and drove on) and a taxi to the rail station arrived early.

The idea of this trip was to shoot our model and red umbrella standing precariously on the edge of a cliff inches from a 2000 metre vertiginous drop. Poor woman, she hated heights and we shot her with long lenses from the safety of solid ground one hundred yards away. Using long sharp sticks and a cattle prodder we forced her to stand near the edge and came back with great shots. (see example further down and the end result color panorama arriving shortly.) We stayed at the Hotel Divisadero Barrancas before they were bought out by someone who has almost tripled the room rates presumably for all those Chinese tourists that have been arriving by coach by way of Chihuahua.