Relics III
Abandoned wooden cart and cachaça still.
Relics II
Gears used as part of a belt-driven sugar-cane press. The juice would have been fermented to make cachaça. Behind this room is another with a pair of abandoned stills.
Relics I: Gateway
I am still catching up with the film processing and scanning. This is the first in a series of images all taken of or around abandoned buildings at the astonishing Hotel Relicário, in Minas Gerais. We will write more about the hotel specifically later on. All the photographs in this series were taken with the Leica M7, Zeiss ZM 2/35 and Ilford HP5+ (the last roll I had left on this trip).
Cachoeira
Brazil has quite a serious drought at the moment, but the cachoeiras are still running. And where there is a shortage of beaches, seemingly all the people run to the waterfalls… Composite of two images, taken with the Leica and Ilford HP5+ film.
Reliquías do Tempo
The Pousada Reliquías do Tempo, Diamantina.
Dark Skies
Some landscape images from Parque Nacional da Serro da Cipó, shot on 35mm film. These were taken using a combination of a dark red filter and a polariser. One disadvantage of using the Leica is that you can not directly see through the lens, and so aligning the polariser for best effect is challenging.
Belo Horizonte: Two Markets
Some more holiday snaps street photography, from two markets in Belo Horizonte. The first set are from the Sunday Market, which mainly sells clothing, toys and arty things alongside the Parque Municipal and Palácio das Artes: The second is from the central market, which sells just about anything you can imagine (although I am not sure about the bird-cage hats): All images were shot with the Ricoh GR in TAv mode using auto ISO and fixed focus. The indoor market shots are a bit of a stretch – to get […]
Edificio Niemeyer
Some images of the Edificio Niemeyer, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Quite an elegant design, and one which looks ideal for the hot sunny climate here. All images taken with the Ricoh GR, with the last one framed and cropped to help reduce perspective distortion.
The Streets of Ouro Preto
Some street images from some short walks in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil. I hope that these capture some of the diversity of the people here in a town which spans everything from the mining communities to upmarket tourism. These were all taken on a short visit to the town, while wandering around looking at the sights (and sites) rather than actively setting out on a proper project. It would need a much longer visit to do this really well. Also, a couple of almost-but-not-quite street images that I quite […]
Ouro Preto
Ouro Preto is a strange place. It was once the wealthy hub of the mining areas around and gained huge wealth from the gold and other minerals. Much of this was spent constructing a town in the image of Portugal, an illusion helped by the steep valley slopes and roads. Although much of the tile-work found in Portugal is absent, the styles area clearly imported from Europe and adapted to the local resources. This architecture has resulted in Ouro Preto being designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, cementing the town’s current renaissance […]
Red Planet: Minas Gerais
A short collection of images illustrating the open-cast mining, just north of Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil. This is historically the primary source of wealth and power in the region, and even today the mines feel more like city states than industry – characterised by their high security and ever present patrols, all neatly badged with the company name and emblem. These images were taken just a few kilometres north of Ouro Preto. This short excerpt from Google maps’ satellite imagery (CNES/Spot) shows some of the scale of the open-cast […]
Rock Textures
Rock textures from a flash-flood prone river bed in Parque Estadual Biribiri, Brazil. Something different from the usual tourist snaps of the waterfalls and colourful houses, these have been processed in to high-contrast black and white to bring out the forms without the distraction of the colour… Click on an image below to show the gallery. All images were taken with the Ricoh GR.
Diamantina
A rather wet arrival in Diamantina, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The hail and rain on arrival was bad enough that the streets became more navigable as rivers than as roads, although fortunately the bad weather vanished as quickly as it had appeared. A short collections of images of tourist snaps from the town. These are not particularly curated – most of the narrative shots were taken on film that is still a long way off being developed.
Market
Some images from the central market in Diamantina, Minas Gerais, where stalls sell various forms of Cachaça (a spirit distilled from sugar cane), fruit and vegetables, and also some handicrafts and rocks and minerals for the tourists.
Serro
Some slightly surreal snapshots from Serro, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Again, these were all taken with the Ricoh GR, which an excellent travel camera if you forgive the few times when you can not see the LCD thanks to the bright sun… hopefully we have some more serious images captured on film – if it survives the 40 degree temperatures and multiple x-ray exposures.
Milho Verde
Some macro images of some very small plants near the Cachoeira Lajeado at Milho Verde (literally “Green Corn”) in Minas Gerais, Brazil. We stopped here briefly while travelling up from Serro to Diamantina, taking a break before tackling the unpaved mining roads. This is quite an unusual environment, with dark rocks, white sand (from the incredible quantities of quartz here) and a peat bog. The bog area is quite sensitive, so we did not venture very far from the seemingly inevitable bathers in the small streams running through the area. […]
Transient Eye 