Color or Black and White in Design

Color and design goes together,  I was working on a new design  in full color I really like the richness of the color on this one, that's why I decided to try black and white, finally I will keep them both,

I find that both image are very strong not because of the color or the black and white but instead it's the contrast between the tone that for me make this image.

Let me know what you think,

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Mendoza Week 10

Like most of the week, Monday is the shopping day, I try to buy most of heavy stuff, juice, oil, milk, yoghurt, and all the pharmacy and grocery stuff, I start by the Mercado Central, for some fruit and veggie, my week dose of ham and cheese, I always bring my cold pack, in case I need to buy meat or ice cream.

Mercado Central

The next stop is Carrefour our Super Grocery Store, when I do my shopping on Mondays, I always bring my little bolsa de compras, it’s a grocery bag on wheels and I filled it to the top.

Back home I clean all the leafy veggies and bag them.

Tuesday was my day off, I went for a walk and a coffee with my friend Alejandra, we went to San Martin Park, I love that park, I will come back to take some flower shots, with my new meet up group “Mendoza Digital Photography Meet Up”.  

San Martin Park, a great place to relax

Wednesday I decided to take a walk to visit my friend Haisley Hair Salon, 10 min walk from my house, the weather was extremely hot, it’s getting very warm in Mendoza, I think spring is over for good, Wednesday we got 35C and by Saturday we should get up to 37! When I got to his salon I asked him if he could do my hair, I didn’t expect to have it done that day, but he had space and told me to come back in an hour.

Haisley Hair Salon is Paso de Los Andes only few min. walk from my house

What a great experience, Haisley is from England, he moved here a bit more than 8 years ago, he is a great guy and a fabulous stylist, a real artist, the kind of hair stylist that everybody wants, such a relieve to have him living so close by, it is always very difficult to fine the perfect hair stylist, it can take forever, and even worst you may never find a good match, I felt so lucky, he did an amazing job with my hair. He did my color, my highlight, my cut, for $510 pesos, it’s not cheap, but for a pro like him it’s an amazing value, he is by far the best hair stylist I ever meet, this is it for me, no need to look somewhere else!

 Haisley doing my hair

I was very happy with the result

 Love the hair cut and the color, thank you Haisley

I have been looking for someone to print Marc and I work, we got an answer from one of the best one in Mendoza that does work similar to  Adorama in the US or Vistek in Canada, the only drawback was that they only had two kinds of paper available. I also got the name of one of the top photographer in Mendoza, he is an art teacher at the University, and a printing pro, he is using all kinds of paper, like my old time my favorite Epson Summerset Velvet, he also print on canvas, he is using a Epson Stylus Pro 9900, 44” wide, he also have a studio that he rents. I sent him an email, and we will meet with him Friday pm, cannot wait, he only speak Spanish but I don’t care, it will be a real treat to have a pro to take care of our printing needs.

Thursday I waked up early, I had to do an image for my conceptual photo class, this one was on fear, cry for help, lock up, captive, lonely, depression, nightmare, so many thing come to mind, I have a real fear of being a hostage, this time again I used myself as the subject, and a flash to light one side, to get definition! I had the cyan tone to add drama.

Friday we got our meeting with our printing pro, so much knowledge, feel very good to know that we were in good hands, he is a real pro, and got all kinds of paper from Europe and the US, everything that I was looking for and more. He is quite expensive and we will revise our pick, and try to reduce cost, we have our next meeting on Tuesday, we are looking forward to have many prints done by him.

Saturday morning I went to Leon to meet with my new Meetup members, we were 4 on 12, this first meeting was only a welcome meeting, next one "Saturday Nov.8" will be hands on, street photography in downtown Mendoza!

To finish the week we went to church on Saturday night, it's a new church close to where we live, only Spanish, we will eventually get fluent!!!

Our Parish Church,

This is the inside of our church, I used Topaz Impression "Da Vince Sketch 1 modified

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Diane Kitchen Mendoza Argentina

 My economical chicken with brown rice recipe, serve 4

I always try to do a week end recipe on Friday morning, as we go out a lot on week end I don’t want to cook on Friday and Saturday evening, a lot easier to reheat!

Last week end, I decided to try Mendoza chicken, I got one pound of skinless, boneless chicken breast cost me 31 pesos, about $3.00US for free range, the rest of the ingredient cost around $4.00US.

I used my small Panasonic Lumix, easy to handle in a busy kitchen!!!

Free Range Chicken Breast Cubed

The ingredients

3Tbspoon of olive oil

1Tbspoon of tomato paste, I used sun dried tomato paste

1lb of skinless, boneless chicken breast cubed

3 small onions chopped

I small eggplant cubed

I red pepper chopped

250g of asparagus chopped

2 small zucchini chopped

5 cloves of garlic minced

I can of tomato cubed

I cup of brown rice cooked

2 to 3 cups of left over lettuce, arugula, or any green leaf you have on hands “spinach, Swiss chard etc…

Seasoning I used provincial and pizza

Directions

1. Cut each breast into 1 inch pieces.  
2. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add chicken, and cook until golden. Remove chicken, and set aside.
3. Add onions and Eggplant to oil in skillet. Cook for 5 minutes, add the rest of vegetable excepted   salad and cook for 5 min., add rice  and stir 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste "I use sun dried tomato paste" the can of tomato including the liquid and a bit of water if necessary.

   

    My favorite tomato paste!

4. Return chicken to the skillet, stir in seasoning and garlic cover and cook for about 15 min at low heat.
5. Add the green on top cover and cook for another 5min, stir all the ingredient.

Serve 4

Add onions and Eggplant to oil in skillet cook 5 min. at medium heat

Add the rest of vegetable and cook for 5 min.

Add rice and stir for 1 to 2 min.

Add Chicken, tomato paste and tomato

Add seasoning and garlic, cover and cook at low heat for about 15min.

Add the green, cover and cook for another 5 min. at low heat

Mix well and serve

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Mendoza Week 9

The weather is getting very warm in beautiful Mendoza, between 28 and 35C this week, it’s also very dry.

Thanks to my friend Gisel, I got some shots of me, This is the kind of bottle I need for a week!

I start my week visiting Lopez Winery, I was with my friend Gisel, we took the train to the last Station Gutierrez in Maipu, the winery is only 2 blocks from it.

It’s only buildings, where they process the wine and a restaurant apparently it’s very good, will have to try it next time.

Thank you again to Gisel, this is my kind of bottle for the month!

This is my yearly dose, a real dream!!!

Basically it’s a great place to visit, cost nothing to do the tour, taste 2 wines one white and one red, the white one was a Sauvignon Blanc and it was very good, the red was a very good Malbec, after doing the tour you get 15%off on the wine you buy, I bought the Sauvignon and a small bottle of Grappa mix with honey, the cost 40 pesos, hard to beat! 

The best part is that it is accessible easy train ride that cost only 3 pesos, no tour to pay, and you get a discount, I will go back to take more photo in a couple of weeks, and for sure buy more wine!

We had a meeting in midweek with the representative of a printing co. as we need to get very large prints, we assumed that we were meeting with a large printing co. their website looks pretty good,  we had to get downtown we had the address and the phone number on hand, we decided to walk there.

We arrived on time, rang the bell no answer we figured that he was late, that’s happen quite a bit in Argentina, we waited for a while and a guy showed up, we introduce ourselves, he seems confused but let us in, I knew something was wrong when he asked us to sit in his recording studio, not exactly what we were expecting.  I explained to him why we were there, he looked at us and said, you got the wrong guy, and the wrong place, and we were very confused as we had that address as the place to meet.  

This guy help us out, introduced us to the owner of a small photocopy co. that spoke perfect English, he tried to contact our printing guy by phone, that didn’t work, finally we decided to take the cab back home.

As we were walking toward the taxi stand, a guy was running toward us, and yes it was Alejandro the printing co rep. We asked him where about was his office, as Marc my husband that is handicap really needed to sit, believe it or not he didn’t had an office, he asked us if it was ok to sit at a coffee to discuss our needs, and we agreed.

It was a complete loss  of our time, as this guys was not representing a large co. his website is all bogus, he works from his home, and his work is not at all what we were looking for, he is the kind of guy that print restaurant menu, and business card.   I had to see the positive side, practicing Spanish for half an hour.

We took the cab back and get directly to Leon Café Bar for a cold one. Our friend Karl, an old German guy that live in Mendoza for the past 16 years was there and told us that he knew a place where we can have high resolution printing. The following morning I went and Karl was right, a real photolab  even if the limited size is only 34” wide, it doesn’t matter, we will reduce the size of our file and that’s it, it was like a dream I was so happy, we should have our first print done next week, we want to have the photo mount on thin wood, no frame, we have to see how that will look, hope that it will work.

Since we arrived I am searching a measuring cups and spoons set, impossible to find, our friend Angelo “Chef Angelo” that knows everything about food and where to find cooking stuff told me that you cannot find such a thing in Mendoza, but the good news he had a spare set that he gave me, funny that they don’t have it here, not sure how they measure their stuff!  

Gisel and her mom, 2 beautiful women.

Friday I worked for my friend Gisel, she was having her graduation ceremony, she is a doctor since a while but the ceremony wasn't done yet. I arrived at the university auditorium around 8:15am, it was very busy with the new grads and their family, I was getting a bit stress as Gisel wasn't there yet, she arrived around 9am, her taxi was late, she looked like a million box a real star, I was very happy and relived!
I had in my mine that they were going to do it with black gown the academic style, I was all wrong, all the new grads were dress as they wanted, and Gisel had a beautiful dress with matching high heel!

After all the formality, we were able to do some shots inside, very difficult situation, no space to move, extremely packed with people, but we manage to take good ones, after what we went outside to finish the shooting session, it was a lot better outside as we had more space to move and better light.

Gisel, she looked like a star!!!

It was a great experience, I did a lot events in the past, but never like this one, this was more like photojournalist, no space, bad lighting, difficult environment, unknown, a real trill!!!

I will do it again if I have the chance, such a great experience, I loved it!!!

Gisel and I, thank you to her friend for that shot!

Gisel and I, thank you to her friend for that shot!

 


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