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Recycling Sewing Machines

I have talked about the recycling done in La Antigua Guatemala before with Haves and Have-Nots, Public Enemy Number 1, Guatemalan-style Salt …

Zapatero a tu zapato

Believe it or not, in La Antigua Guatemala people still take their shoes for repairs, quite often extending the life of shoes …

Colorful Guatemalan Kite Decorations

Colorful Guatemala, I tell you! It is quite common for businesses to decorate with colorful Guatemalan kites during October and November. Above, …

Strong Winds Are Coming

The “strong winds” begin making their way to Guatemala; Vientos fuertes would say Miguel Ángel Asturias. With the vientos fuertes also appear …

Red Lantern District

Not a farol left over from last year’s posadas. Nor indeed a house of ill repute, except perhaps with regards to the …

Old Lock Revisited

If you want to win this photo as a post card and receive it via regular Guatemalan postal mail system at your …

Architectonic Details: Arches

Same as yesterday’s photo, we repeat the repetition theme, but even more so today. Can you tell me what elements repeat in …

Architectonic Details: Beams

Last time I talked about repetition, repetition, repetition, I mentioned that capturing repetition was very desirable in photography. Well, photographing repetition is …

Theme Day: Feet

Once again AntiguaDailyPhoto.Com will be participating in the Theme Day of the City Daily Photo community, over 500 cities around the globe. …

Dome Roof Details at Cafe Barista

All along these 1,124 consecutive entries, I have been compiling a collection of abstract photographs of La Antigua Guatemala with the idea …

Guatemalan Style Backpack

Guatemala has some of the best textiles you can find in the world. If you come to La Antigua Guatemala, you can …

Lines

It’s so easy to take interesting photographs around La Antigua Guatemala; you just have to walk with your eyes wide open. For …

Lines and Shadows

This warm light was the dry season. Although, I am sure we can get similar sunsets during the rainy season, I don’t …

The Webs We Weave

Too bad MO does not come by here anymore. He would definitely appreciate a photo like today’s; full of power lines. If …

Wireless Antigua Guatemala

Details, details, details. Oh boy, here are those ugly power lines again. But wait, what’s in the background? Sure enough, now everywhere …

Farol or farolito

Details, details, details. There are so many different street lamps or faroles, as they are known in Spanish, in La Antigua Guatemala …

Antigua’s Lamp Shadow

Details, details, details. I also believe that, some times, details are like opportunities: you blink and they are gone. So you always …

Antigua’s Metallic Owl

Details, details, details. I believe beauty manifests itself in the details. Correct me if I am wrong!

Antigua’s Door Knocker

Details, details, details. Gustave Flaubert believed that God was in the details. Other people believe the devil hides in the details. What …

Antigua’s Window Grate

Details, details, details. Often you find little windows on the doorways of the houses of La Antigua Guatemala and most often they …

Guatemalan Chinchines or Sonajas

The sonajas or maracas take on a different name in Guatemala, they are called chinchines; an onomatopoeia (onomatopeya in Spanish). Generally, Guatemalan …

Guatemalan Money Sampler

Just like everything else in Guatemala, money is very colorful. I believe I could also do a series in Guatemalan currency. What …

Theme Day: Circles/Spheres

“I miss playing tenta, el botecito, escondite, kick-ball, cincos, trompos and all the good old games kids play…” —MO It was only …

Preparing the Flowers for the Dead

By moving from one section of the mercado to another, we find that las floristerí­as (flower shops) are preparing the flower arrangements …

Spanish-tile Roof Pattern

We, graphic designers, are a weird bunch. We like thinks like patterns, textures, colors, signs, letter shapes, shapes, you name it; if …

Guatemalan T-Shirts for Sale

I caught this sampler of Guatemalan t-shirt motifs. I am glad to see new ideas being stamped onto t-shirts. By the way, …

Sousaphone Player Thinking

Or why didn’t my parents had me take classes of piano, guitar or saxophone? Something more sexier and less heavy, come on …

Jailed Sousaphone

The more I see things through the camera lens, the more I realize how little I know and how ignorant I am. …

Theme Day: Lines

I have decided to participate on the monthly theme of the City Daily Photo sites again. You may not know it, but …

New Tile On the Antigua Blocks

With the new administration at La Antigua Guatemala’s City Hall, there have come new regulations and orderliness on the streets of this …

Wood Texture from a Beam

The wooden texture from beam which appeared in Holding Up the Heavens. Sometimes you just need to let time do its magic.

Antigüeño Shadows

I know I have a problem… what can I say, I like to photograph shadows. Shadow Casting Lamp and Before Sunset in …

Holding Up the Heavens

Cielo is the Spanish word for heaven and sky. Cielo is also the word used for the ceiling, normally referred as cielo …

Guatemalan Police Anecdotes

One of the benefits of living in a third world country is that you don’t need to read Cien años de soledad …

Public Enemy Number 1: The Plastic Bag

Dot 2: The very same day, after reading the article above in my lunch hour, I walked back to the office and sure enough a plastic bag came dancing towards me, just like in the American Beauty film. So what was I to do, but to pull my camera and to start shooting this new enemy. This incident happened right in front of Doña Luisa Xicotencatl restaurant; one of LAG’s landmarks.

Guatemalan-style Salt and Pepper Shakers

eck, sometimes we even do some local recycling too. For instance, all those empty hard liquor bottles can have a fulfilling second life as salt and pepper shakers.

What I like about the people of Café No Sé is that they know when they are onto something; at once they apply the Café No Sé branding, and just in case, they make sure it is registered. These are my kind of hippies! 😉

Guatemalan Carnival Cascarones for 25 Centavos

Cascarones are empty eggshells that are filled with pica-pica paper confetti and then covered up with another piece of papel china (tissue paper) and finally painted in colorful ways; like everything else in Guatemala. The final painted eggshells are reserved for the Carnaval as it is known carnival in Spanish which is the ‘Sad Tuesday’ before Ash Wednesday; why ‘Sad Tuesday’?, well carnival means “farewell to meat”, you can only be sad if you are going to keep a vegetarian lent. 😉

YO-YO: The Catalog

YO-YO: retratos y autoretratos exhibit received so many accolades and magnificent reviews by the critics that it prompted Carlos Woods, owner of the gallery, and his curatorial team to pump even more oxygen by bringing the photo exhibition to one of the most important venues in La Antigua Guatemala and to create a catalog to record the fist YO-YO. This impressively beautiful catalog is printed on an European paper size (24 cm. x 36.5 cm or 9.5 in. x 14.5 in) and was designed by Paola Beverini. This is the second catalog that is put out by the Carlos Woods Gallery, but the first that will be on sale. I recommend its purchase as soon as it hits the shelves.

YO-YO: The yo-yos

Under the name of YO-YO: retratos y autoretratos (portraits and self-portraits) the Carlos Woods Gallery is presenting its very successful photography exhibit in the Sala Marco Augusto Quiroa of Paseo de los Museos in the Hotel-Museo Casa Santo Domingo in La Antigua Guatemala.

The photo of the hanging yo-yos above is part of one of the teaser window displays to make you go visit the exhibit inside the Marco Augusto Quiroa gallery in Hotel-Museo Casa Santo Domingo. You can find this yo-yos window display in the hallway that connects the underground parking lot and the hotel.

Cups of Light

Exactly one week ago, these cups were fill with light first, then happiness and finally with wine. These cups were used in the inauguration of the new Mayor of La Antigua Guatemala, Dr. Adolfo Vivar of Unión de Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE), and to wave goodbye forever and ever and never again to the former ‘mayor’ Antonio Siliezar; one the worst episodes in La Antigua Guatemala’s City Hall.

Corner Detail of Spanish-tile Roof and Street Lamp

I will let you in a little secret: I was caught taking the photo of the watchers (the guard and the photographer) so I pretended I was not taking their photo, but rather they were actual visual noise on my attempt to capture the street lamp, the stop sign and the roof detail. It worked, they continued their voyeuristic activities and so did I. Boy oh boy, the things I do for you guys!

Postscript

Sometimes bad things turn good. Guatemala’s postal service is so slow, expensive and unreliable that in Guatemala the concept of junk mail …

Surf Shop in La Antigua Guatemala

The waves are getting closer to La Antigua Guatemala. So it is no surprise to find a “surf shop” in a Spanish colonial town embedded between coffee plantations, flower farms and volcanoes.

Actually, you can get straight down to the Pacific Ocean in about 45 to 60 minutes (depends on your safety level while driving) through one of the most beautiful stretches of road in Guatemala, known simply as Carretera 14 (road #14) and then the highway in Escuintla. Two prime beaches for surfing are Monterrico and Sipacate, both of them about two hours from La Antigua Guatemala.

Architectonic Design Elements in La Antigua Guatemala

La Antigua Guatemala is like a huge living catalog of colonial architectonic design elements. You can walk around the town armed with a camara, notepad and pencil and an eye for detail to capture all the beauty that make up the architecture of The Very Noble and Very Loyal City of Sait James of the Knights of Guatemala. All the colonial architectonic design elements make this an enchanting and haunting little town. It is, certainly, more than the sum of its elements.

Inside the Safety Zone

Ever since I took a snapshot of a Electrified barb wire fence I wanted to come back to the subject to get …

Ciudad Vieja Cathedral Dome

In the picture above you can see the dome of the Ciudad Vieja Cathedral; a town four kilometers away from La Antigua Guatemala. Now a little trivia information. Ciudad Vieja was the second settlement of Guatemala City right before they moved it to where La Antigua Guatemala is now. Thus, its name means Old City or Ciudad Vieja in Spanish (check the aerial shots of Ciudad Vieja).

Holy Week Elements: The Making of the Carpets

The making of carpets from sawdust, pine-needles, flowers, vegetables is a community-forming tradition. People get together by block or near-by neighbors to create the carpets on which the processions will pass by. Sometimes the making of the carpets is done at night, all night so they are ready for next day’s procession.

Holy Week Elements: Sawdust Carpets

The making of sawdust carpets (alfombras de aserrí­n) with its vivid colors and eye-catching patterns are among the most prominent elements of the Holy Week celebrations. You can come back all this week to see other samples of carpets made with flowers and fruits and vegetables.

Why do We Love Our Land?!

We don’t love our land because of its great size and power, because of its weakness or tiny size, because of its …

Malo Mori Quam Foedari

No, they are not Ku Klux Klan as you might be inclined to believe at first glance. They are cucuruchos which is …

Saturday for Lunch

Sometimes there is no better lunch than a great book. Now I am having Saturday from Ian McEwan for lunch. The prologue …

Inside a Bicycle Repair Shop

I have posted many photos of bicycles in and around Antigua Guatemala and I even said that bicycles are among the most-widely …

Stain Glass Señor or Mister

Even simple details like the marker for the men’s bathroom is done with style in many places around Antigua Guatemala. Here you …

Rusted Owl

The Artisans Fair was the showcase for the handicrafts made in all the villages around Antigua Guatemala. So far we have seen …

Name the Seeds!

Can you name all the seeds in the photograph? I will help you with the one my finger is pointing to: Chile …