In Light

Estudiando La Palabra
Templo y Museo de Santa Clara
Queretaro, MX

For the most part, we seldom see the whole picture. We see glimpses of truth between light and shadows. Within those shadows we see more than 50 shades of grey, to be exact we can detect 256 shades of grey.

Details are found within highlights and shadows. So it behooves me to study both and find them. For the greater part of my life, I've been fascinated by and obsessed with details. My photography gravitates to the intricacies placed in my path by a universe fraught with dynamic pieces. My eye is inquisitive but doesn't portend to know the answers. Consequently, I photograph and process images as an attempt to understand why I was drawn to them to begin with.

It's through this process, my creative process, that I gather clues about myself. The reason I view things the way I do is a mystery solved only by further inquisition. It compels me to discover and explore my own feelings.

Through this process playing with details of shadow and light, I become enlightened about who I am. I want to know and not merely regurgitate what I've been taught. The final process reveals a life and answers that otherwise would remain concealed from me. I use the light and the light finds me.

www.photographybyalhernandez.com

Colonial Opulence

Casa de la Marquesa
Queretaro, Mexico

Had a few moments in between business meetings in Queretaro to visit the central part of the colonial city of Queretaro, Mexico. Not to far from my hotel was the impressive lobby of Hotel Casa de la Marquesa. Built in 1756 by Alarife Cornelio at the behest of Don Juan Antonio de Urrutia y Arana for his consort Doña Josefa Paula Guerrero y Dávila, the architecture represents one of Queretaro's finest structures.

If you should travel to Queretaro, you might want to consider spending a bit more just to have an opportunity to experience the opulence of an era gone by. Quite the contrast to what was being built in America at that time in civilized places like Boston and New York. It's a reminder of how things can shift over time. None the less, there's a tremendous history of entitlement in Mexico. It's also a reminder of how exclusion via access to education bars the rest from wealth. Opportunity should go beyond the grant of a ruling monarch.

www.photographybyalhernandez.com