August Morning Skies over Mazatlán Sinaloa Mexico

MazReal isn't all about parodizing the lifestyle of expats here in Mazatlán.

Here instead another set of 'What the snowbirds are missing' type photography that only occur in the rainy season during the early hours of the morning between 5 and 6.30 am. The season where NOBs* have retreated back into their temperature comfort zones.

Girk McGirk out again in his pyjamas wandering up and down Olas Altas to get these spectacular shots 

more snaps after this………..

Down At The Embarcadero

MazReal kicked their ace photographer Gerk McGirk out of bed and send him down to the embarcadero to see how the other half lives.

This is what you may see on any given day in September if you dragged yourself out of bed at 5.30 am and went down to the embarcadero where the ferries go to Stone Island. We all know that old people always wake up early and all expats are old so it shouldn't be too difficult.

As a Gringo, you can also be assured, if your Spanish is good, you will understand that some of the fishermen and vendors will relay a few choice words in your direction that will get the others howling. Laugh along with them.

more colourful pics after break..

Zimbabwe A Brief Photographic Tour

English weather is always bloody awful so to get away MazReal staff and servants took ourselves off to Zimbabwe Central Africa to escape from the damp and chill for a few weeks. We were to indulge ourselves in a first class tented safari but we got arrested not long after entry and consequently had to lie low after our interrogation and release. Here are some images we bought back as we hastily headed back south to the border and the relative safety of South Africa. As you may see, many of them are taken through the windows of a fast moving car.

The Zimbabwean government decided a while back to embrace the US Dollar as it's own one hundred billion dollar* Zimbabwean note was running out of space to daily add the extra noughts due to the country's rampant inflation. They do not have the foreign currency to send back to the US its $s for recycling so their own are becoming a tad grubby, floppy and well-used. Hence the picture of a worn out buck.

More stuff after the jump:

This Is London - Yesterday

London's previous major decided London should not allow skyscrapers to ruin it's flat, Victorian skyline except in a designated area called Canary Wharf from where these images were taken. The newer mayor, however, has encouraged the opposite. Now new 'interesting' buildings are appearing annually and Londoners like giving names to these new tall buildings. Three of these were not here the last time we were in this city which is just over a year ago and they are from left to right: The Shard, The Cheese Grater, The Solar Panel and The Gerkin.

What You Miss If You Are A Snowbird.

All photographs taken from Olas Altas on this day between 6 am and 6.30 am.

Mazatlán during the winter months provides nice sunset skies virtually every day but in my opinion you can see just too much of them. Whereas in the hot summer months during the rainy season you can observe these skies if you get up early enough. These cold grey skies bursting with energy are less frequent and you have to be on your toes because they don't last long due to the strong winds sweeping them across the horizon and when the sun fully rises, the light destroys the drama.

©2013 Matt Mawson

Some Recent Images From The East And South

Cuiabá, Mato Grosso Brazil

Chapada Dos Guimaraés, Mato Grosso, Brazil

Orchard Road, Singapore.

Soya Farms, Mato Grosso, Brazil

more great stuff after the break

Mazatlán Photography

Photography for Nextel Latin America by Matt Mawson | Make Your Own Book

Following on from the last blog, in this here book are my favourite images from the completed photographic projected commission by Landor San Francisco for the Nextel Corporation Latin America. The project encompassed photography in Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Peru. These images will be used on all the advertising and marketing for the communications company over the whole of Latin America. So in the next 6 months some of the Mazatlán imagery seen in this book and the rest in their library may be seen on billboards and bus shelters and the web.

Mazatlán Photo Fest

The fresh face of Helarte Ice cream and Mazatlán

MazReal is fortunate to have on it's books a number of very famous documentary photographers who contribute to some of the world's most important picture libraries and work freelance with some of the world's largest corporate clients. (One or two them can be seen drunk to the right of the screen on our staff photo) Here we allowed one of them to work with Latin America's largest telecommunication company through an ad agency in San Francisco. Obviously we took a great percentage of the photographers fee which only goes to pay for our vodka and blinis and chauffeurs and dog-walkers and bum boys straight off the container boats fresh from the Philippines.

Artists

So here you see a good example of the creative talent we have in this fine city and I am not only talking about our expensive photographer. Here are actors, chefs, artists, entrepreneurs, mothers, sports persons, farmers, shopkeepers, surfers, musicians and other fine upstanding citizens.

Thanks to everyone who was part of this.

Photo Fest #2 will out soon.

Hector of Molika - Chef

 More great images after the jump...................


Editor's note: The writer added a piece about inducing people to be part of this with huge accounts of cash. That was untrue and we have sacked the writer for adding unnecessary colour to the article and kept the money for ourselves.

All images ©2012

Mazatlán - Belly Dance On A Roof in Angel Flores

all images ©2012 Matt Mawson 

 Belly dancing in Mazatlán

The origin of the name 'belly dance' comes from the French Dance du ventre, which translates as "dance of the stomach". Belly dance is also often referred to as "oriental dance" and also sometimes raks sharqi. This is Arabic for "Dance of the east".

Here is a bit of music to accompany it.

more dance after the jump.

When A Photographer Uses The Word "Artist" Reach For Your Gun

The answer to this tedious question "Is photography art?' is yes, but almost never when it thinks it is. Most of the photographers of the 19th century who declared themselves artists are considered quaint at best and grotesque at worst. And today the pictures that have pried money out of the arts endowments look like what Fotomat used to not charge you for or what you find in your Aunt's attic.

The great photographic art has been made by people doing something else: by Eugene Atget trying to document Paris -

Eugene Atget

or August Sander trying to codify all the faces in prewar Germany -

August Sander

or Irving Penn (the greatest in my view) trying to fill the pages of Vogue -

Irving Penn

There is of course Man Ray but he was a painter

Man Ray

and Lázlo Moholy-Nagy who discovered that the more things you did wrong, the better the photograph looked. (I like that idea as it works for me sometimes. I call them serendipitous mistakes or happy accidents.) He is one of my favourite artists and photographer because in photography he used to teach his students new ways to look at the world which is the mantra of all creative people.

Moholy-Nagy

However the most famous is Stieglitz who manipulated and scratched his images to ensure the hoi polloi would know they were artists.

Stieglitz

Nowadays the photographer most like to be accepted by the hoi polloi or haute scribblers are those who are really painters like David Hockney -

Hockney polaroid collages

and those bloody awful kitschy pictures of a dogs-as-people - William Wegman who is also a painter.

Wegman

But the high priestess of high concept is Cindy Sherman who creates provocative reflections of the America Psyche using props and wigs and things and whose picture go for millions. 

But today's photographers who use computer software to elevate their normally mundane photographs to fine artworks at the touch of a key by adding artistic effects thus ensuring they appear as 'paint-by-numbers' pieces can be safely dismissed as hopelessly misguided and downright lazy. These works do not, as I mentioned before, show the viewer a different way of seeing the world and as a result they fail completely as creative artworks or even as photographs.