7 Color Lagoon

This game that seems as if it would go so quickly and seldom does lets me post a photo in a more elegant manner, more often. The HPOD today is a recent shot of a rainbow. There were others to be seen here and on the gallery of my house on the market for sale that were less rainbow-ish. This one at this point in time made the perfect arch for me underneath the Mayan sun, near the water and filled with hope and absolution.

It is mounted in a gallery page to itself at HPOD: RAINBOW.

An update of the Page for a Gallery Menu is due since these Picture of the Day galleries and adding up until I find a better alternative.

Photo © Howard Dratch, 2007.

The view is from the terrace of my home on the shore of the Lagoon.  It is now, formally, on the market.  Real estate agencies are listing and featuring it and presenting it as an excellent choice for a Bed&Breakfast.  Given the advances being made on the highway down from Tulum, Playa del Carmen and Cancun (which has already been finished from Chetumal and Belize up to Bacalar and then to Limones which is the turn-off to the Costa Maya and Xcalak Peninsula; developers and investors have already made an appearance.  The real estate “bubble” here has just begun to inflate unlike Miami, Tampa and the other over-built cities in the midst of the housing/credit crisis.

Contact me at hfd@7colorlagoon.com for more information or follow the links to the trusted agencies that are offering the property: Mexico International 

and Mexico Caribbean.

I didn’t realize how much work would be needed to have other people sell my house.  Every day brings workers of one specialty or another to keep up the repairs and sprucing up.  The casita’s masonry has been repaired and the plumber who promised to come hasn’t.  It is Mexico, after all.  The painter had disappeared for a few weeks and was being given up on but returned limping from his fall from another job’s ladder.  Fresh paint is beginning to cover the barda, that cement wall surrounding 3 sides of the property.

Recently the first would-be buyer came for the tour and, today, another.  That, too, is exhausting.  Somehow my life is being laid bare in showing my nest to strangers — American and Mexican so far.  Perhaps it will become multi-cultural and some other countries will yet check in.

Here is a recap of the agencies with which the house is listed:

The latest listing  is from the agency MexicoCaribbean.

It is featured on the Mexico International site as a B&B

.

Another Real Estate agency is promoting my house — their site puts it in the “Hotel/B&B” category. It would fit well there with its size, bedrooms with views, upper and lower floor terraces, dock, boat ramp, huge lap pool, gardens, casita, perimeter walls and spectacular views of the Lagoon of the 7 Colors, La Laguna de las Siete Colores.

This agency is Mexico International which is based in Merida with an office in Mahajual, the Caribbean coast near here. The specific listing is HERE.

The new HPOD (Howard’s Picture Of The Day) actually got made a day after the first.  Daily as it were.  Not only that but the magic of digital photography allowed it to be shot as dark fell, processed in iPhoto, made into a web page by the great app, JAlbum, and uploaded to my web host the same night.  Click on over to Tree Frog — 1 picture–a short trip.

The slimily enchanting little creature, this tree frog of a tropical persuasion, thinks the antenna of my Jetta will do as a tree to let him hang out on and eat the passing smorgasboard of insects.  Still, he is a wise looking fellow.  No telling what other thoughts are dancing through his head.

The pornographic tuliapan charmed me into playing with it a little more and mounting the first of my HPOD galleries — Howard’s Picture of the Day.  Which I will never do every day or anything close but it is a nicer presentation.  It is not yet on any of the gallery menus or links.

This is one of the “famous” views of Bacalar. It comes from what is one of the highest points around a little south of my house near the Cenote Azul. It shows a small preview of the reason it is called The Lake of the 7 Colors. Here there is indigo to white but add some sunset
and splashes of magenta and red.

In my garden the tuliapan are lush and so filled with blooms most days that it has been ill-advised to trim them into simple topiary.  The tuliapan is much like hisbiscus except that the buds are NOT edible and do not make tea.  This particular plant produces this sexy, multi-hued flower with its trailing pistil.

Don’t forget that the beauty of the lagoon, the cenotes, and tropical gardens can be yours.  See Bacalar House For Sale.

I have been taken over by the vicissitudes of the stock market and have been riding its volatile waves for a time. It seemed a necessity to by more active and aggressive but the fact of the matter is that it is no place for a man with a weakened heart. Especially not recently.

It is time to take care of pictures and words as well and even to make myself something less of a hermit. That part is difficult in Mexico but there are pictures to be made and places left to explore.

Don’t forget the gallery of recent digital pictures

Plus a few more from cruising from Miami to Mexico. I indulged in an encyclopedic start of work vessels — living near a port would be fun — a design game with the cruise ship accoutrements and mechanisms and a shot of yet another condo project still under construction in Miami which is one of the top 10 cities for foreclosures with a highly over-built housing stock. Which should help for renting or buying there as the mortgage crisis begins to hit bottom sometime in the next year or so.

There was also the great display of work vessels while leaving Miami Harbor. They are just as much fun as the years of shooting everything that moved on New York highways.

Back in June I began what was to be a series of gallery pages showing off recently done photographs not yet put in other galleries. The first one worked and then I moved on to other projects. There was also the problem of using out-dated technology, film-based photography. This has been one of those technological advances much like the move from Daguerre’s invention to the other thread of photography: paper, glass and, finally, film. Daguerre had a great process that made beautifully sharp, life-like one-off originals. It was elegant and doomed.

Had I known how quickly and how totally a digital camera would become that which I wanted to choose first; I would have spent even more for a more advanced model Nikon. Film, especially here in Mexico where the labs are few, non-existent or just incompetent, is useless for me. Even the D40X I bought is pleasing me immensely. It is light and quick and seems to be providing usable results with its inexpensive lens and with the few Nikon lenses I have that work on it — though those (the 60mm/2.8, 85mm/1.8 and 135/2.8) were the last and mostly the best. Except for my beloved 105mm/2.5 that I had AI’d from its original state, heavy with brass and with perfect glass. It was a hold-over from the first days of freelancing photography in 1981, one of the first lenses I bought at a loft-store in the Photo District of New York, one of the first days snugged up to the counter of lens-deals and camera-deals and negotiating as a “professional”. And it was one of those great buys whether I paid too much or too little because it earned me thousands of dollars and more over the next 20 years or so.

THERE IS NOW A NEW PAGE OF RECENT IMAGES: GALLERY: RECENTSCANS.

There are 10 pictures on subjects of which I have written here, some previously shown and some not. There are a few from the recent sea trips to and from Miami on Carnival’s Fascination and Imagination. The shot of the Leger at MAM and — turn behind you Howard to see what it was you didn’t see — is a collection of planes and a wall of glass with a cloud happening by that pleased me. The scarecrows were appropriate for this Day of the Dead in Mexico and there is one of my first work on a series of hieroglyphs on the streets and walks of Miami left by an ancient civilization much as the Mayans and Egyptians left behind their signs. An infinity symbol for the ages.

The town hall of North Salem, New York makes a sunset appearance/disappearance and there is a one of an encyclopedic series begun of water vessels. I particularly like shooting work vessels.