View from the Top

One of the things I miss most about living in Buenos Aires, is the lack of good view spots. This city is so damn flat! Fortunately some friends of mine live in a 1950's-era monster of a building they have nicknamed the "Death Star" that has an amazing terraza some 30 floors up. I decided to take them up on the offer to snap some photos to give you all a good sense of the magnitude of this city. Note that in the very last photo, you can see Uruguay across the Rio de la Plata.

Junin, Argentina

This last weekend might have been the beginning of the rest of my life. Well maybe that's a bit drastic, but it was my first job as official wedding photographer, something that has been in the works for some time now. My good friends Julien St. Hilaire and Luciana Patiño got married in Luciana's hometown of Junin, a provincial city about 3 hours to the northwest of Buenos Aires. The happy couple had arranged for transportation for Julien's side of the wedding party, he's from Quebec, and for the close friends here in BsAs to ride up altogether in a big shuttle bus. So off we went at 9 am to real gaucho land, something I had been wanting to do ever since I arrived in Argentina.

It's pretty standard here for people to have vacation or weekend property in the countryside, a way for people to get away without going too far. So even though we all hotel reservations in the city of Junin, our first stop was Luciana's family's campo, a full working farm about 20 minutes outside of the city. Apparently her grandfather, who at a young 81 might be the coolest man on the planet, and some other family friends were putting together a massive asado for our arrival. I had been to asados before, a lot of them in fact, but there is nothing like going to an authentic Argentine asado where almost everything you are eating comes from the farm. The specialty of the day was lechon, or suckling pig in English. The most amazing pork I've ever eaten in my life. We ate, drank a lot of wine, and played on the farm. Some people rode horses, the rest of us just sat there and basked in the silence of the country. It felt so nice.
The wedding wasn't until the evening on Saturday so between the asado and the main event, we wandered around Junin which to be honest isn't too exciting, but still worth seeing I think. Weddings here are pretty much the same as in the States except there are a couple major differences. For one, there are no bridesmaids or groomsmen. I had some ideas for pictures of both those groups of people, but apparently they don't have them. Also, the bride and groom don't kiss facing the priest, they do it facing the crowd from the podium with the priest at their side. Kind of interesting.

After going to this wedding, I can't wait to go to my next one. The party was incredible and in Argentine fashion went until about 7 am, with even the oldest guests staying awake until the end. They just can't get enough here! I have attached a link to the photos on facebook and will be uploading them to my pbase as well as my new wedding photography site (yet to be named or registered). Now that I have something of a portfolio I can let the wedding biz going! Yeah!!

Enjoy!

Full Facebook Album

3 Months of a Photo-a-Day

http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/foto_por_dia

Enjoy! I promise a real blog update soon too! Lots to share...

Photos of the Week: Sept 20th-26th 2009

1. Stream of headlights on Pasco, taken from my rooftop
2. A guy getting pumped about the weekly La Bomba de Tiempo drum concert
3. Delivery-only sushi from Sushi Pop
4. El Litoral, my favorite no-frills parilla in the city
5. Malbec, baby!
6. Shoppers and vendors on Peru street pietonal
7. Silvia Duga, judge for upcoming reality TV show

Photos of the Week: Sept 13-19th 2009

Arpoador Skate Park, Rio

Felipe Motta and Marcelo Ment (tags: Mottilaa and Ment) recently got commissioned by Converse shoes to repaint the famous skatepark on top of Arpoador rock that separates Ipanema from Copacabana beach. Ment was one of the artists I worked with when I was in Rio, he is a GENIUS! This skatepark is amazing, check out Mottillaa's blog. Cheers!

http://www.sneakersbr.com.br/blogs/mottilaa/3634/FIX-TO-RIDE:-A-SAGA

Photos of the Week Sept 6th-12th

Una Foto Cada Dia

Photo-a-Day is back! Keep your eyes on this gallery, I will be trying to take and post a different photo everyday for as long as possible.

Facebook
Pbase (high-res)

Neuza and Parada de Lucas

I decided to go up and check out the northern community of Parada de Lucas, where my friends Karina and Rafael have been doing community projects. Karina teaches an art class and Rafael, even though he is Mexican, has been in Brazil long enough to be an accomplished capoeira teacher. The woman that runs the program, Neuza, grew up in this neighborhood, and as Karina put it, is like Mother Theresa except she "shags, smokes and drinks." This favela is in the northern part of the city, a place few tourists or foreigners go on purpose. Since practically ever major attraction is located in the southern part of the city (Christo, Ipanema and Copacabana beaches, Pao de Azucar), the north has been largely forgotten and ignored. You get a totally different sense when walking into the favelas here, they're grimier and smell horrible because of the lack of proper plumbing. In any case, I thought I should see it firsthand, and I'm glad I did. The kids in this center, although hyper as hell, were great. Here are a few shots I got.