swine flu, schmine flu

Headed a little south next month.

A bit for vacation, a bit for adventure, and a bit for another purpose.

When we've been deciding where to take off to next, I seriously went to Barnes & Noble and had books from 4 different continents lying around my spot on the floor, as I sat cross-legged and wide-eyed. To say we had no direction was an understatement. Little by little it got narrowed down, and the final decision is quite close to home comparatively.

We're going to Mexico. Going to explore the Yucatan for about a week to check out some Mayan ruins, caves, pyramids, cenotes, and reefs...then flying to Mexico City to meet up and volunteer for several days with the group Armonía that Rosa Loves has been raising money for.

When we found out that we could stay and work alongside this group, it definitely solidified the "where are we going" question. I'm super excited to meet the people of this humanitarian group, who work with "some of the country's poorest urban and rural communities transforming poverty into life".


A good friend has worked with them for the past several summers and actually is the one that brought the story to Rosa Loves. You can read more about the amazing story here. Shirts are being sold to raise scholarship funds for a few of the boys that Armonia supports, to go to college.

"These scholarships mean many things for these young men, as well as for their villages. They provide an opportunity to go to university and study, but, beyond that, they provide an avenue of hope for their village. Many of these villagers live in extreme poverty, and are so far from anything else that help or transformation is nearly impossible. Each scholarship recipient agrees to go back to their village for at least two years to put into practice what they've learned at university for the benefit of their community. For many, this is a willing joy, as they learn agricultural, business, or education practices that will improve the lives of their families and communities."

There are just a couple hundred more shirts to sell and we're hoping to be able to deliver the rest of the funds to the group...
So if you want to make a huge impact in a couple of boys' lives, get involved:

• JOIN THE FACEBOOK GROUP: "HELP FUND NICO AND LUPE THROUGH COLLEGE: 300 SHIRT CAMPAIGN"

• READ THE STORY

• BUY THIS SHIRT or THIS SHIRT
I look forward to bringing you news after meeting and working with this group personally...and really hope that we can give them the rest of the scholarship money if it's raised before we leave.

...until then, I'd better brush up on my Spanish.
adios!

matters of clothing

I've been loving this blog for a while now.

It's so simple, full of inspiration, interesting, and lively to me. With just a photograph The Sartorialist {def: a person who practices or is interested in matters of or relating to the tailoring of clothing} draws me in and takes me away to a street somewhere else, who I meet a person who is in someway wearing their personality through clothing.

He walks the streets, finds someone that interests him, and takes their picture. "My only strategy when I began The Sartorialist was to try and shoot style in a way that I knew most designers hunted for inspiration. Rarely do they look at the whole outfit as a yes or no but they try and look for the abstract concepts of color, proportion, pattern mixing or mixed genres."

Sometimes they wear very classic pieces, sometimes funky, sometimes super rad, and sometimes a bit strange...and that is what I like so much, because they all have a story to tell.

His photos have come from Paris, London, Melbourne, New York City (+ Brooklyn, Governor's Island), & Milan...but recently he's been posting a series from Florence, which of course has been making me smile.

I love to look at each photo and try to figure out where they were standing from the small hints of architecture I get in the background.

Although most of my top favorite posts have come from Melbourne and Governor's Island, here are some of my favorites from Florence (which tend to be more classic):

the high school student I love this one because of the baptistry behind her.

man stripe i'm not sure where this is, but for some reason makes me think of the Oltrarno area. and his tennis shoes are awesome!

color kids definitely thinking that is the round building at the university in centro

Definitely check out his blog for more shots in different cities. They really are captivating.
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On a different note, I've been posting more to my Tumblr acct, which are those posts that I don't feel need an entire blog post written about them...but just things I like, want to share, or are inspiring to me (words, music, photos, videos...) So check it out if you're not tired of me yet. erinlewis.tumblr.com.

day at the park

scenes from the park
Every now and then I have a really good idea...

...that turns out not to be so good.

Take this past weekend for example. We enjoyed a super nice beach day with friends...some surfing, some swimming, some reading. This was followed by a couple refreshing cojitos (not a typo. just with coconut) and a light lunch. It was so glorious outside, that I didn't want to stay in but I also didn't want much more sun.

So I said, " I know! Let's go to the State Park and find a nature trail!". Thinking that at least then we'd be under shade in the forest part. So we paid the entrance fee, slathered on the 70spf, threw water bottles and a camera in my bag and took off.

Seriously, as I passed the sign "Nature Trail >>> this way" I was bitten by the first of dozens of mosquitos. Never did I stop to think that it's 97º, almost 100% humidity, the day after almost a month of solid rain dumping more water on the city than this area has seen in years, and we've been warned about the high mosquito population this season. As soon as we looked down, we could see actual swarms of these nasties all around our bodies.

running past fairy shacks • stopping for one second by a sign • still running
So, off we went. Running.
It became just a funny joke almost of finishing the entire trail without stopping waving our arms around or slapping every bit of exposed skin every 5 seconds. An informational sign would come up, just long enough for us to read outloud the name of the tree or flower, before sprinting up and down the forest of dunes.

I think my bites totaled somewhere in the teens...but at the end we were rewarded by a stroll on the dunes walkway overlooking Salt Run, the beach, and more rain clouds in the distance.


Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea afterall.

film of all kinds

Film has been a consistent theme in a few of the random things that have interested me lately. Just before I left for Italy last month, I'd really began to appreciate again film cameras. The novelty of digital is starting to wear on me, and knowing I can take endless photos with no consequence and seeing way too many hacked Photoshop jobs...the careful selection, luck, anticipation, and even mystery in actual tangible film intrigues me once again. When I took photography in school, it was on an old manual Nikon with b/w studies in the darkroom. I mainly just got frustrated and didn't take it seriously, then was ready to "get on with it" when digital got popular. I've had a good run, but alas am ready to experiment.


Enjoying the instant gratification of the Polaroid recently has been fun, and with a lot of the film bearing dates long expired, the results are very mixed. Plus, I'm borrowing a friend's vintage half-frame camera now to try it out. (Flickr Half-Frame samples) But after being introduced to the magic that is a Holga, I'm so excited to get my very own and start working on some medium format. Light leaks, double exposure, natural vignetting, plastic lens scratches are all what is fun about film to me...not something to avoid with digital. I like not knowing exactly what I'll get...and I'm a lot more thoughtful at the images I choose to capture. We'll see what becomes of this new interest...hopefully I'll have some fun summer images to share.

Next.

Old classic movies. This was a random occurrence a couple of weeks ago, when I was really in the mood to watch some vintage, so we looked up the AFI Best 100 and got started. We've already nailed down a good handful, and Hitchcock is up there on the list. I've watched his films before, and we even own a couple...but all that came to mind was the annoying school children singing "hiplety-hoplety-now-now-now" over and over in The Birds. (Seriously, I have no idea what the words are to that song, but it's sounds like that gibberish to me, and would get stuck in my head for days after watching it). ...but, I must say that most of his films age so well and are pretty genius in many ways.

I'm usually prefer to see movies outside the theatre, but think I definitely have to make it for the 3D showing of Pixar's new film Up as I've heard rave reviews over and over and over...so here's the trailer, and I hope to see it soon.


One more.

Super into Passion Pit right now...Sleepyhead gets played back to back (sometimes cheating and starting at around the 1:19 mark)...slowly compiling my Summer '09 mix. Although it's music, and not film, the film that was produced to go along with the music is quite interesting. Enjoy (and happy June!)