In less than two months, many of you, will be at Rosarito, in the north-west end of Mexico, for the 2023 #hivefest and you are probably at the travel-planing mood or envisioning cold cocktails and warm, starry nights!
Myself I am going to miss it, for one more time but my thoughts will be with you and since I do have a bit of Mexico in my archive, I figured that it is a nice opportunity to dust it off and share with you some memories!
The location though, has nothing to do with Rosarito, it is at the exact opposite of the country, at the south-east. Google maps says that it is 42 hours of driving away, so I guess you won't visit it this time :)
I am talking about Palenque, the ancient Maya city that was destroyed about 13 centuries ago. A wonderful archeological site now, illustrating the glory of a long gone civilization.
As a UNESCO World Heritage Site there are many information available online. Let me copy a small part from the UNESCO page. You can follow the link below, if you want to read some more interesting facts about it.
The archaeological site of Palenque in the state of Chiapas is one of the most outstanding Classic period sites of the Maya area, known for its exceptional and well conserved architectural and sculptural remains. The elegance and craftsmanship of the construction, as well as the lightness of the sculpted reliefs illustrating Mayan mythology, attest to the creative genius of this civilization.
source
I am not much of a archeologist but I can tell you without any doubt that the scenery is totally mesmerising. The amazing Mayan architecture, so grand and yet so brilliantly integrated into the natural landscape, is just beyond description. If you ever find yourself close to this astonishing place don't let the heat or the fatigue discourage you, it is a site that worths visiting, no matter what!
As for photography lovers this is a true playground :)
The shooting opportunities are just endless!
If you are still reading, thank you very much and welcome to the second part of the post. This is mostly technical so if you are not interested in this kind of stuff, you might as well skip it :)
You are probably wondering by now what's wrong with 
The explanation is that those pictures were taken on slide film and what I did is to try to "scan" them without a scanner. I followed a rather risky path to do so, taking pictures of the slides with my macro lens. I was hoping for a descent result but the truth is that I was kind of disappointed.
The pictures below this point are taken by 
The biggest challenge was focusing. I held the slides in frond of a bright window covered with rice paper since I don't have a light box either. The thing is that when I touched the slide on the window I photographed the texture of the rice paper too, altering the picture altogether. And when I didn't, it was almost impossible to hold the slide totally parallel to the camera and every tiny move led to blurry areas.
So if I want to do this again I should figure out a more stable set up with fixed position both for the camera and the slide.
The second problem was the light source. I figured that sunlight will be suitable for the task but the result was way more unnatural than expected. I hope though that if I solve the focusing problem, I will be able to correct in editing any other anomaly in toning and colour.
Considering the time and the effort I consumed for those low quality result, the experiment was a failure but I decided to share the results and maybe you have something to say that will help me do better next time :)
Unless stated otherwise, all the pictures and the words are mine.
Thank you for reading and if you want to know more about me you can check out my introduction post.
Commenting, upvoting and rebloging are highly appreciated!
