Photos and rants

I went to Tigre last weekend, which is a quaint touristy village that's a 40-minute train ride north of Capital Federal Buenos Aires. I didn't realize I was living Capital Federal or that Buenos Aires was a province and not just a city until I was on the train to Tigre. Now I know.

I say all that to say this, the photo above (taken in Tigre) is now my favorite photo I have taken since I've been in Buenos Aires. Normally seeing something as random as this happens only when I don't have a camera. But fortunately I had mine on me so I was able to capture the greatness of a man putting up purple letters while wearing purple pants.

I snapped the quick photo then walked away before I had to deal with his co-workers asking me a million questions.

Then I got home and drove myself crazy with Photoshop trying to get everything to look right. I estimate that I only know how to use maybe 0.0002 percent of Adobe Photoshop, so there's not much I can do to photos. I usually just crop them and mess with the levels and curves because I prefer slightly underexposed pictures.

The fun part is trying to get the colors and contrast absolutely perfect knowing that the picture will look different on everyone's computer based on their own monitor's contrast/brightness/screen tilt/8 million other factors.

The other great part of Photoshop is then printing the picture after hours of work and realizing your the color pallets of your printer and monitor aren't even close to matching.

So hopefully the picture above looks decent and for the hell of it, here's the original, which my friend Johnathon likes better. And because he went to Oxford and Princeton we should probably all just take his word for it.


In case you're curious V(missing e)latorios means funeral home, which kinda takes some fun out of the picture.

Johnathon also doesn't believe in photo post-production as he claims it ruins the integrity of the photo and he is also well aware that Photoshop can drive you mad.

That being said here a pic Johnathon took in Chinatown that I'm going to rank as my favorite photo taken in Buenos Aires by somebody I personally know.


It's dope because it has that whole Photoshopped black and white with only color showing look, even though it never touched Photoshop (OK I resized it on Photoshop). It's also a great photo because it captures my Nike Takashi Dunks, which are the only pair of Dunks I brought here.

I know nobody cares, but I'm just going to throw it out there that I'm in desperate need of another pair of those dunks and if anyone know anyone who can get them, put me in touch.

And if anybody give a fuck I'm using a Cannon SD-850IS and Johnathon is using a Cannon EOS 400D, or as it's called in the States a Digital Rebel XTI (because Americans "always have to give something a ridiculous name").

More photos I took:

Tigre is just a town built around a delta, everyone I talked to before I went told me it sucked. And they were kinda right, it wasn't that great, but for a 35-cent train ticket it was worth the trip and it provided for a good day of exploring

These are some shots from a catamaran we went on. It was the weirdest catamaran tour ever as they gunned in one direction for 20 minutes then turned around and gunned it back. Everyone in the narrow river was boating the same way they drive, so there were constantly giant wakes crashing up against the shores. Just weird shit all the way around.

Here some pics I quickly snapped while we jetted along at mach II. Mom, don't worry I have a lot more I'll show you another day.

This was a crazy stair case in Tigre.
This is my friend/enemy Jerome, some times I like him, some times I want to kill him. He's a crazy Frenchman who wore a Hugo Boss blazer over a nice polo and sweater to Tigre, which I thought was weirdest place you could wear a nice blazer to until he proved me wrong later.

He went around this market feeling every cow hide because he is set on buying a complete cow hide and taking it back to France. I'm not a PETA person by any means as I've already ate a couple cows since I've been here, but there was something bizarre about him going up to each cow hide, feeling it, saying "Zis is zshit," then walking away.

Jerome has been all over the world and one night he went on for 20 minutes talking about restaurants across Earth that have disappointed him. Every story ended with him telling the manager to "Fuck off" and him storming out of the restaurant without paying. I just hope that I'm doing half as good of living up to my country's stereotype as Jerome.


That concludes Tigre pics.

While everyone else rocked blue to neutral colors for the Boca game, Jerome again wore his Hugo Boss blazer over two nice sweaters with a pair of dress slacks.

This is a pic of Jerome and Yakub, who is a great guy despite sometimes looking like a smaller Vin Diesel.

These are my Colombian friends being Colombian.
Nike put on a huge show in Chinatown, which impressed from a marketing standpoint that Nike was willing to shut down an entire block in Buenos Aires' Chinatown just to simultaneously market their sportswear with the Olympics. I didn't really understand it at all because it was just a bunch of Chinamen dancing without wearing Nike product.

Here's the Nike shop in Chinatown.
I'm out for the weekend so don't waste your time checking the blog, but come back next week for my Rosario review, my essay comparing the Buenos Aires subway to Dr. Ruffenach and a list of things I miss about the US (spoiler 1 through 10 are Seth Janiga's smile).