Cairo and Alexandria

It's being really hectic over the past week, not just going around Cairo but also to the Giza Pyramids and Alexandria which its located on the north east coast of Egypt, right where the Nile River flows into to the Mediterranean Sea.

Cairo, as I said before its chaos if you don't know your way around, even just going across the street you need to be alert at all times if you don't want to be ran over by a taxi (every hour in Egypt a person gets run over) or for any women whom is used to dress of certain way in our side of the world dresses just like they do in their hometown (skirts, tank tops, short shorts, T-Shirts etc.), in Cairo they will attract a good deal of unwanted attention at the subway, Downtown or any other public place. However, there's a side of Cairo that has a Westernized way of thinking and are more open to see foreigners walking around them.

That has become a little issue in the past 2 weeks of my trip. When I go to villages that consist of small alleys were people instantly notice someone that's obviously foreign, but I've taken a few measures to be able to take a frame or two of something or someone I want before they hide their face or yell "NO PICTURE" or yell things I have no idea what they mean but I'm more than sure it's not something nice.

Here are a couple pictures I've being able to get over the week.

A seller at the pyramids smoking a cigarette; I guess he was around 10 or 12 years old. I didn't try to talk to him because all he knew how to say in English was, "NO PICTURE".



One of the passengers at a train at the Egyptian Railways before living to Alexandria.


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She obviously did not like me.

Sakara

The feeling you get when you walk around ruins that have more than 5000 years its just indescribable; but then you wonder, how is that buildings today have less than a 100 years look like they're going to fall apart, but some of this ancient places have even the colour on the walls they were painted with back then. Who were this people? How did they live? So many questions come to mind but only a few have an answer. All you can do its admire the place and enjoy the weather.

Sand... Lots of It.

Arriving at night, its very little what I could see in a Country I've never being at before. And so I waited 'til the next Day and found out how different it is from the organized world I came from. Forget about pedestrians having the right of way and turning lights.

Hectic as I could ever imagine, even more than my place of birth Venezuela, where driving its not the best ever, I can easily qualify this city as one of the most reckless driving places there are in the world.

And just to make it clear I don't mean to disrespect anything about this country which I completely respect and found very amusing in many ways, but I do find unusual several aspects of it, like it is with any other situation or place anyone have ever seen before and I do apologize if I offend someone at any giving moment.




As old as this might be, it certainly is way more reliable than a car with a pinched tire.



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This morning I had the opportunity to be at the AFP (Agence France-Presse) head quarters here in Egypt where I meat with Photo editor and Photographer Chris Bouroncle from Peru, who has being around for almost 25 years and working on this side of the world for 8 years where 2 of them he was Head of AFP in Baghdad and the last 6 here in Cairo.

Delayed

It's impossible to believe that things will go smoothly through out a trip, regardless of how much you plan it. Our flight got delayed for a hour to embark the flight and people were anxious (or retarded) but it was a pleasant flight nevertheless.




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Once in Paris you forget about anything that might have happened during the flight, its a very different country, for those who have being in Quebec City, it's very similar but ten times better (don't mean to say Quebec its bad, at all) this is a city that goes way back to the Roman Era, more than two thousand years old. Its instantly noticeble, the buildings, undergrounds and landmarks.



It's hard to take pictures of a place that has being shot in so many ways, and its even more difficult to come up with an original shot of the Eiffel Tower. However, in dispite of it, if you pass by Paris you need to have a picture of this incredible place.

Going up L'Arc de Triomphe

Here we go!

I've being waiting for this for a couple months now. As a final project for my last semester in Independent Digital Photography I will be going to Cairo were I'll meet with AFP photographer Chris Bouroncle and a Daily News Egypt and Leo Burnett's writer Mariam Hamdy. After, I'll make my way to Lower Egypt (Alexandria), Upper Egypt (Luxor and Aswan) to then come back to Cairo.

I have 2 weeks before my flight, meanwhile I'll be pre-selling a book with the purpose to gain some revenue for my trip. This book will be made out of work compiled on my journey.

Fastball @ Durham

Intense fastball game between Seneca and Durham College. It always has being for quite some time. The Seneca girls had that extra motivation since last time they meat was a double header were they were very close to take the game but lost 5 – 4, and the second one fell apart and Durham won 7 – 0. However, that extra motivation wasn’t enough, a few errors began the count for Durham and after that Seneca wasn’t able to pick it up. Final score 8 - 1.

Terry Fox Run/Football Opener

The Terry Fox Run. One of many charity events for Cancer Research took place at the back of Newnham Campus at Seneca College were a good number of people ran a 5k distance to support the cause.

Terry Fox was a humanitarian, athlete and cancer activist who became famous for the Marathon of Hope, a cross-Canada run to raise money for cancer research, Terry didn't finish do to health complications but by the time he stopped he had run 5,373 km or 3,339 mile, 42km a day.

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Here are a couple shots of some of the people who ran at Seneca.




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The same day the Football season at Seneca just began with a victory over Centennial. Both Men and Women had great performance on the field scoring 2 goals on each game respectively.



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I just thought thing was a pretty funny picture...

Marcha Mundial contra Chavez

I have to say that I was somewhat impress with all the protests around the world against Venezuelan Dictator Hugo Chavez on September 4th. Some of this places were Barcelona, Paris, NYC, London,to name a few. Either way her are some frames from the march in Toronto.

Matt's & Christina's

First of all I have to thank Kevin Charlie for giving me the chance to shoot this weeding with him even thought he never saw my work before the wedding, he trusted me with an important duty, to record Matt's and Christina's memorable moment in life.

I feel that I was really fortunate to be part of this wedding, not just because it was the first time to shot one but also because of the people that took part in the entire ceremony. And after spending all day interacting with everyone I felt like I knew them for a long while. Great experience and Congratulations to the newlyweds.

A little something...

Great place to shoot; I'm hoping to go back pretty soon.

Real Madrid

I shot a couple frames of Real Madrid, a well known football (soccer) team in the world who came to town to play Toronto FC last night at BMO field.

Here is Cristiano Ronaldo the most expensive player of the moment. It cost Madrid 93 million dollars to get his services.

Night at Ellingtons

A couple nights ago I decided to go out to a cafe to see 2 friends of mine, Selyne and Nika play for the first time with 3 other performers (Escence, Chris and Kaleb) and I have to say this people are awesome artists; it was a great and really plesant night. Fortunatly I was lucky to capture this people playing. Here are some shots.

Jays Game from Field Level!

A couple days ago I had the great opportunity to shoot a Blue Jays game from the photo booth at the Skydome in Toronto. It was one of the most exciting experiences I've ever had in my short career as a photographer and hopefully not the last one.

This was possible thanks to Fred Thornhill, one of the best sports photographers out there and my photojournalism teacher who I appreciate for the opportunity and evertying he has taught me.

I got to use part of his equipment, which it might not be a big deal for some but for me was one the best cameras I've ever shot with, a Canon EOS 1 D with a 300mm lens and a 400mm lens. As well as shooting next to Frank Gunn from AP, one of the top sports photographers in Canada and I was lucky to get a couple tips from him and share laughs with other photographers like Mark Blinch from Reuters, Mike from Sun Media and Chuck who works for the Jays marketing Department (Sorry Dont remember the last 2 lastnames).

Here are some of the frames I got.

Assisting

First of all I have to thank Marc Crabtree and Gillian Jackson for giving me the opportunity to assist on this gig.

April 4th 2009, a date I'll remember forget for the rest of my career as a photographer. For the first time I got to assist a photographer and it was a pretty interesting experience. Things went according to plan I believe. The gig was at a house in Aurora, we were suppose to take 10 exposures of the kitchen and living room for a show on the W Network called 'Take this House and Sell It'. Even though I've never done interior photography before, I think it could be something I could do on the side. Its not as fun as shooting sports photography but I'm using a camera and that's all I care about.

I woke up at 8, got ready and Gillian picked me up at 9 to drive up to Aurora. We got there and I started to set up the lights while Gill put everything together in the kitchen. She has a brown Speedotron kit, some what old but it worked totally fine. Its interesting to learn how to bounce the light against the ceiling or a cardboard to distribute even light in the room.

We spent half a day moving lights around trying to figure out the correct exposure for the rooms. She exposed for the window, the tungsten lights on the ceiling and any other part of the room that had a strong shadow to later put all the images together on a composite on photoshop.

At 2:30 we finished, packed everything head back home. Awesome day, experience and photographer to work with. Thank you Gillian.

you can check Gillian's work at www.GillianJackson.ca

The Guy Who Took The Pictures...

Ok, so this would be the first time I make up my mind to write and start a blog, well, it's more like someone told me I should start the blog... tonight... so I appreciate that.
Maybe some of you ask yourself why "the guy who took the pictures" as a title; actually it happen today but people has been calling me that at the games I've been shooting for Seneca. and I know I don't have a name tag that says Armando but I guess that's what people call us photographers when they don't know our name but I never thought about it until today and I thought it was funny for some reason...

I'm gonna be posting my portfolio and other stuff I'll be shooting on the next couple of weeks.