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Driving Through

photographic journe...

By Fred Lee

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Making a picture is like a woman...

These days everyone has access to a nice camera and it's so easy to become a photographer, and there are a lot of good photographers. I haven't quite figured out how to distinguish myself yet but I did learn one thing I want to strive for, a goal perhaps of where I'd like my photography to be...I was enlightened by a fellow photographer Mia Song you can check out her stuff here: miasongmia.com She said there are so many photographers, so many people who can create a pretty picture, just like there are so many people who we walk by, and look at...a pretty woman or handsome man perhaps passes by us and we think about it for a second, maybe a couple seconds but go on our way...the difference is between that and making a compelling image where there is more, there is depth, emotion, passion behind the image that sometimes just cannot be defined. A woman/man who passes us, or that we see, that we have to get to know...more than a casual glance, we want to know more... It's not enough to just create an image that people look at and move on, but to create an image that sticks with oneself..that's how pictures move, that's the kind of photography I want to create.

Almost Home...

Sorry for the lack of updates, we haven't had internet for a long time, but before we get back on Thurday morning this will probably be the last update. A lot of things have happened which I'm sure I can't all write down or this entry would be really long. The futbol game for me was one of the best things I've done, certainly one of the most fun sporting venues I've seen. Apparently both the teams that played were really bad, but Vasco scored 4 goals, videos to come later(facebook). We haven't been able to get much sleep b/c we've been traveling between Sao Paulo and Rio, on average I think I've gotten around 5-6 hours per night. All of our bodies are broken, sore, ready to go back to that comfortable place we call home. We got to Sao Paulo early Sunday morning at around 6 am, walking around the empty streets, wondering where all the people were. Sunday was just a eerie day. We went to Japan town which was quite good, got to taste market street food but found everything closed around 6pm.

After Japan town we were planning on going to Sao Paulo's Italy town, which was a train ride away off a street called Mucca. Little did we know that would be the scariest street we have all walked on. Empty streets, no streetlights, abandoned warehouses, and closed down businesses. We finally came to the realization that all the stores in that area had closed early, we still haven't figured it out but we think that all the stores on sunday close around 6pm and reopen around 8. We wandered the ghetto streets at Mucca and finally hailed a cab, rushed in and told him to drive us to Sé, downtown Sao Paulo. He ended up dropping us off in front of a Chinese restaurant in Japan town....

The next night the highlight of my day, or maybe even trip next to futból( I don't know if ó is the right o for futból, but it looks cool right?) was the skye lounge, probably the nicest bar/rooftop bar I've ever seen. Rooftop lounge overlooked the city of Sao Paulo, with a heated pool and nice decor. Prices were also reasonable for drinks, although I did order a Jack and Coke, and they charged me for a Jack, and a Coke.

Back in Rio, our first attempt to hang glide failed because of the gloomy, cloudy, rainy forecast over our stay in both Rio and Sao Paulo. We took a jeep tour to Christ the Redeemer statue only to find that they were doing construction...haha. whatevs. We hope to end our trip with a final attempt of successful hang gliding. As for now, we sit or shall I say lay in our beds watching Lion for Lambs on the Tele Cine Premium Channel. Only a few pictures for now, my powerbook is going to blow up. Ciao!

Obrigado!

I don't know where to begin, it's been a pretty jam packed 24 hours, let's start with yesterday a local ATM, I forgot my card and so the machine ate it, I'm glad it did, but I have no access to my bank and I refuse to pay $16 for a temporary card. The troubles continue as I got an email saying Joanne missed her flight...the trouble wasn't her missing her flight but her coming onto my flight...(Andy and Jo took an earlier flight). After landing the dust seemed to have settled after we bought our futbol tickets for tomorrow's game and arrived in time at the hotel for the favela tour (slum tour). Somewhere along the way Andy lost his passport, we arrived home and he started looking for it, luckily they called the driver of the tour and he found it in the backseat. After the tour we came back to the hotel to wash up and go to dinner, we were all anticipating a hungry dinner because we missed lunch inbetween rushing to the tour. We had all you can eat Brazilian bbq, the bbq got the best of us so after just 2 or 3 plates each we slumped in our chairs defeated not by just the salty meat but also the heavy dosed alcoholic beverages. I would tell you stories in between now and when we had the alcohol but all you need to know is Jo and Andy are sleeping, they slept at 9pm.

I've been trying to edit work on my powerbook but the fact that this only has half a gig of ram is a real killer. It literally takes me 8-10 mins to make any correction on a photo. I think I got enough pictures to satisfy my following. I don't think I'm comfortable yet taking pictures, hopefully as I do I will post more portraits. I do want to talk about the favela tour....the slum tour...some of us have seen City of God, and it's not much different from the movie. I was gripping my camera with my life...But they aren't as bad as we thought, colorful and friendly the people didn't seem to mind that we were there. The tour that we went on gives 80% back to the community and to a school that they open, which I think is awesome..especially because I've been reading Three cups of tea(man who opens up schools in pakistan and afghanistan area). Anyway all in all most of the day was productive. I was a little bummed to find out that the seats we purchased for the game was in a safer area, which means not as fun with the crazies in the bleachers... Tomorrow we go on a 5 hour jeep tour through the forest, beaches, and we see the great, Christ Redeemer statue. I think Ada arrives tomorrow morning so we are all excited because i think we're already sick of each other...maybe just me. haha kidding. no really i am. I guess now that Andy has stopped snoring I can lay my head to rest. Ciao!

Brazil!!

Tomorrow I embark on another traveling venture, Brazil. I have been wanting to travel ever since I got back from India. The sucky thing is Brazil isn't really a good place to have your camera on your shoulder because it's so dangerous. I'm going to pray, real hard for God to protect me from bad people wanting to steal my camera. I won't blame him if it does get stolen though, because I could just be doing something very stupid... let's hope not. I will try to update while I'm away so please keep checking, I'm trying to purchase a 12" powerbook before I go, if I cannot then my iphone will have to suffice. I will try to update with just pictures with at least my iPhone, especially since the 3GS has a sweet camera attached to it. Until next time! Ciao!

Highline I'm doing fine.

I always have had trouble getting rid of things, when I was younger it was what to keep in my room or what clothes to keep, probably why 30% of my wardrobe still consists of things i wore 5-6 years ago. I just have a hard time letting go sometimes, this definitely translates into my picking out the best picture. I usually like to show everything and have other people pick out the best ones, so in this entry I'm trying to show quality not quantity. I was at highline park on tuesday with some friends, here are some shots. I probably could've taken out a couple more, but baby steps right?

Walking around the city

Some shots from the past weeks with my mark II. It's truly an amazing camera, not many words to write so here are the pictures.

It's only a camera...right?

I have grown too attached to my shiny toys that I have grown to love over the years, usually any word with apple or canon is pretty much at the top of my possession list. This past weekend I went to the beach with some friends and the seriously the weather couldn't of been better if I had painted it myself. Gray skies, big waves and rain. While I was sitting in my water with my friends all i could think of was, fred go get your camera this is awesome. just do it. nike. Ok, kidding about the nike, but seriously I had the urge and usually I would've ignored it but I just couldn't, I thought how mad I would be if I never tried. So I get my camera and I bring it into the water, the water is about mid stomach level which I thought wasn't bad, but the waves were high, I'm busy taking pictures, some friends are yelling at me to go back to the beach, and others are just laughing along. I wish I could've described what I saw in the lens at that time, it was better than any picture I could've taken, it was an experience that I had when I looked through the lens, so I started snapping away thinking in my head "this is awesome!" couple drops of water here and there, what a great idea.... then my friends start yelling..."WAVE!! GET OUT!! RUN!!!" I look, sure enough a big wave is coming...I start running back but then I remember if I get caught where the waves break, I'm a goner I need to attack the wave before it breaks...so I turn around and jump the wave, the only thing above the water was my hand with my camera....at this point I gotta say I felt pretty invincible. I can jump these waves easy... uh oh spoke too soon, just as I get cocky in my wave jumping abilities... I see a huge wave...something in my stomach told me it was it... like I knew this was the wave to take me under...so I jumped, hand above the water..."safe, thank you Jesus" right when the wave passes, I get pulled in the undercurrent and lose my footing and fall in. Just like that. I popped up as quickly as possible as if to somehow hope that the 5 second rule of foods would some how relate itself to water and cameras. The first thing I saw was water in my lcd...I tried to wipe it away...but i couldn't...then my friends say, DUDE, is it ok?? is it broken? nah, it's cool, it's fine... yeah it's totally fine, i respond, I didn't want to put a damper on the mood so I just put on my happy face and walked back to the shore...the funny thing is...I wasn't mad, I was actually ok. I was glad that for the first time, I had kind of acted like a real artist. I did because I wanted to, and more than the final product I went through an experience, Art isn't just a finished product you show ppl so they can OOO and AHHH, it's the process sometimes you go through, even if none of the pictures would have come out, I would've been ok, now, am I happy the pictures still came out? of course! I now kind of understand what my teacher would say, he says sometimes he leaves his house deliberately without film and just takes pictures...the memories that he shoots, the frames that he sees stay with him, it's not for the finished picture but for the experience of making the picture. And besides...it's only a camera...it's not like I can take it with me to heaven... so with that..i present to you some pictures...some final words from my camera before it decided to drown, maybe forced upon itself but nevertheless, it's dead and gone.

ten day challenge.

A friend challenged me to a 10 day challenge, to take 10 pictures over 10 days over the theme of beauty and inspiration. I took on the challenge only to have found myself fail already...I was suppose to email him every night with a picture...but I missed the first night, because I was super tired. A lot of me is hesitant because by not doing the challenge I can't really fail. Sad i know. I have issues. Either way I'm trying to bring my camera most places that I go just so I can get into the habit of shooting while walking around. New York is such a beautiful place where so many things happen but most of time I just miss it. here are a few shots from yesterday and today. I'm not sure if I've decided on making a photoblog out of quantity or quality, and by that I mean, do I post often with mediocre shots or only when I have awesome shots, a tough decision that I will decide later, but for now...