Learning the Ropes on Homemade Videos

It was quiet in the gray light and early enough that there were no cars or people on the streets.  That’s why I like to shoot my pictures on Sundays—specially early in the morning, when the sun is dressed in gold.

That Sunday morning, the clouds were slung over Panama City like steel hammocks.  I knew it was going to rain, but my desire to go to the Baha’i Temple was greater than the risk of getting wet or shooting sullen pictures.  At approximately 9:30 a.m. the skies opened up and the area surrounding the temple became dark, foggy and saturated with water.  There was no way, I could get any decent snapshots of the stunning Baha’i building.

In an effort to take something home from the visit, I decided to explore the videos capabilities of my ole Canon PowerShot A720 IS camera.  I’ve had it for two years now, but for some reason, I had been hesitant in using its filming capabilities.  Now was the time to see if the camera was worth its salt.  The area was rapidly becoming more and more foggy and it was raining cats and dogs when I started filming.  It was an ideal test to see how good—or bad—the camera really was.

Below is a brief video of my visit to the Baha’i Temple on the outskirts of Panama City, Panama.  I’m planning to return when the sun is upstairs to capture the beauty of the premises around the temple and of the building itself.  When you see the pictures, you will understand why I’m so passionate about capturing its stunning image for Lingua Franca.

Caveat; this is not a first-class video, nor a best example of Shakespearean English.  My accent is terrible, but I wanted to test the microphone and the video; so I had to plunge in and test the waters.  I apologize beforehand and humbly request that you bear with me while I learn the tricks of the trade.  Here we go.

Stay tuned for appropriate snapshots of the Baha’i Temple located about two miles from my house.  It’s one of the most beautiful temples in Panama on top of a rolling hill.  The scenery up there is amazing.  Good Day.

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Playing in the Rain

One of the Twisters came over for a brief visit.  He had been absent for about a month.  I was amazed at how big he was and his mature way of thinking and expressing himself.  Baseball is his latest inclination, and is making plans to travel to Miami to play, if his team wins the championship.  His parents are over the moon at the possibility of seeing their son playing baseball in the States.

Anyway, about noon it started to rain profusely and soon rivers of water were flowing down the street in front of our house.  The rain was pelting the roof furiously.  Under these conditions, Abdiel decided to make himself a couple of paper boats and enjoyed placing them in the currents of water flowing downwards.  He was using an old umbrella to protect him from the tropical shower.  I noticed the battered-brightly-colored umbrella, and immediately made a beeline for my office to fetch my Birthday camera.  I just had to capture the scene of Abdiel playing in the rain.

This is what came out of the lens of my ole camera.  Take a look.

Snapshot of Abdiel posing for the camera under a cloudburst in front of our house in Panama City, Panama. Photo ©Omar Upegui R.

Snapshot of Abdiel playing under a tropical rain yesterday afternoon. The red umbrella looks like a million bucks and so does Abdiel. Happy moments. Photo ©Omar Upegui R.

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Crying in the Rain

Even though we should be one month into the wet season, it’s been awful dry and suffocating hot.  The day before yesterday, I was helping my wife wash some clothes.  After they were hanged out to dry, it took less than five minutes to have them back totally dry, folded, and ready to be stored in the closet.  It was so hot, you could fry an egg on the street.

The days are hot and so too are the nights.  You sweat in the light and sweat again in the dark.  The electric fan isn’t any good; it just blows more hot air into your body.  We turn it off and wait and wait until we get a feeble breeze to calm the heat.  And then again, sweat in the light and in the dark.

Yesterday the weather changed abruptly.  It rained all day long.  It wasn’t exactly a cloud burst, but nevertheless it rained and the temperature dropped to a comfortable level.   No more sweating in the bright nor in the dark.  The sheets felt nice and cool under our backs and the fan was set to Off.  For a change we were so happy to see the liquid freshness dropping from the sky, and a smile came to our faces, of course.

Having said that, I would like to explain the title of this post.  I related yesterday’s rain to a beautiful song performed by Willie Nelson and Shania Twain called, Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.  It has been a favorite of mine for a very long time.  Yesterday’s rain brought this song to my mind, so I decided to share it with you today.  Whaddya know, two songs back-to-back in my last two blog posts.  Rather unusual.

Please join me in listening to this delicate song about rain.  It’s a lovely song indeed.  Here we go.

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Bursts of Red

Statistics show that this year we had more rain than during the last 90 years.  On December 8th, the skies opened up and it rained and rained and rained some more.  Ten persons died in the small town of Portobelo on the Atlantic Side when their homes were covered with mud due to large mud slides.  Hundreds of people had to seek refuge in schools when their homes were submerged under water.  The deluge lasted about fifteen days and whole towns and villages were completely flooded.  Only the roofs could be seed from the air.

The great casualty of these floods was the contamination of drinking water.  Most of the rivers which provided drinking water to the urban centers were filled with mud.  The filters stopped working and the water treatment plants had to halt their operations or decrease the output of fresh water to about forty percent. Water was rationed  and thousands of people had to buy their drinking water at the supermarkets while it lasted.

Fortunately, the Chorrera and Miraflores water treatment plants were slightly affected and their contribution to supplying water to Panama City was most fortunate.  We were lucky to find drinking water at the Don Bosco Church.  The toilets were flushed with rain water collected in pans and pots of all sizes and colors.  When we got water from Chilibre, we collected it in large containers to clean the toilets, since we knew there would be no water the next day.

Yesterday we had running water most of the day and this morning we also had tap water.  I understand the situation is now under control and the rationing of water is almost over.  The Panama Government is importing fresh water from Costa Rica to calm the population down which is desperate for the precious liquid.  Neighborhoods were provided with water by large trucks.  People lined up to fill their containers and sometimes the confusion was so great, the policemen had to intervene to calm the temperaments.

As all this was happening, a strange event was taking place in our front yard.  A patch of plants that almost never bloom, suddenly were covered with bright red flowers.  For every calamity there is a fortunate consequence.  It was a beautiful sight to see our front yard covered with bright red flowers.  I took a picture of this blooming event as a calming catalyst to my nerves for all the unfortunate events which were taking place in our beloved country.

This is what I saw on our front yard about a week ago.  Here we go.

Photograph of red flowers which suddenly bloomed in our front yard last week. Photo ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo: ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo ©Omar Upegui R.

Presently, the waters have subsided and slowly the people are returning to their homes to continue with their lives.  What else is there to do?  The rains have almost ceased and Carne Vale is in many Panamanians minds.  Life has to move on.  Birds must sing and beautiful flowers must grow.  There is time for everything as the Good Book says.  Good Day.

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Clothespins Floating in the Wind

I’m writing this post at 10:09 a.m. (-5 GMT) on a Saturday wet morning.  As usual, we had our daily shower, only today Mother Nature got up earlier and did her scrubbing.

About 08:17 a.m. we had a brief Nature’s performance of light and sound—meaning, lightning and thunder.  From my post at the kitchen window, I could see the brilliant streaks of light and shortly afterwards, the corresponding thunder.  The rain act lasted about an hour.  Now it’s bright and sunny outside.  It will remain this way the rest of the day.

As I scanned the neighborhood from our kitchen window, I could see several raindrops glued to the blue  twine on the laundry area of the house.  But I noticed something else clinging to the string swaying softly in the wind.  They were plastic clothespins my wife had left hanging on the string the day earlier.

From my perspective, the clothespins looked like tiny lanterns glowing under the  bright Panama tropical sun.  I went immediately to my office, fetched my Birthday camera, and took several pictures in an effort to capture the scene before the droplets evaporated.

For the sake of trivia, let me say that this ancient household tool was invented by a fellow named David M. Smith of Springfield, Vermont in 1853.  It consisted of two wooden “legs” hinged together by a metal spring.

I know many kids in the United States don’t know what a clothespin is, since 60 percent of American homes are now equipped with automatic dryers.  In Panama, clothespins are hanging from every clothesline.  Dryers are far too expensive, and the cost of electricity doesn’t make things any easier.

A few years ago, clothespins were made out of wood.  Now, they are made out of plastic.  I understand wooden clothespins were also used in the United States.

Before World War II every clothespin in the United States was made of wood, usually a hardwood such as birch, beech, or poplar, abundantly available and resistant to splitting. Then one summer day in 1944, the story goes, Mario Maccaferri, an Italian immigrant and the inventor of the plastic reed for woodwinds, was sent out by his wife to purchase clothespins. Their local shopkeeper had none in stock; Maccaferri went to his reed plant and returned home that evening with six models of plastic clothespins. He went into production immediately with a clothespin that became such a hit retailers would take them away by the barrelful.

Having dedicated a couple of paragraphs to trivia, now it’s time to dedicate some time to images. This is what came out of the lens of my Birthday ” digital light box”.  Here we go.

Photograph of a blue plastic clothespin hanging from a plastic cord after a brief rainfall. (Credit: Omar Upegui R.)

Notice how the clothespin seems to glow under the morning sunshine. (Credit: Omar Upegui R.)

All alone without anyone to play with. (Credit: Omar Upegui R.)

More than one are joining the bunch. (Credit: Omar Upegui R.)

This old timer is showing the passing of time; it has started to deteriorate. (Credit: Omar Upegui R.)

A rainbow of clothespins floating softly in the wind. (Credit: Omar Upegui R.)

(Credit: Omar Upegui R.)

This is the only wooden clothespin that I could find. They are being replaced by plastic ones which seem to have a longer life. (Credit: Omar Upegui R.)

For those of you who have never seen a clothespin before, this is how they look like.  If you come down to Panama you will see them everywhere floating in the wind under a warm tropical sun or a wet tropical cloudburst.  Good Day.

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Dancing in the Rain in Panama on a Hot Summer Day

At this moment—6:06 a.m. (-5 GMT)—the temperature outside is 22° Celsius, equivalent to to 72° Fahrenheit.  By noon, the temperature will probably be 34° Celsius or 93° Fahrenheit.

January is almost gone, which means we are now entering into our second month of Panama dry season.  It’s still breezy and cool most of the day, but we can expect very hot weather for the months of March and April.  Our wet season usually starts by mid May with the first cloudbursts.  I love them.

The reason I’m talking about the weather, is that our grandnephew Abdiel can’t stand hot temperatures.  I sometimes think he’s an Eskimo that was delivered by error to a Panamanian mother.  Most of the time he’s shirtless.  When noontime comes, he starts to get his pants off and remain the rest of the day in his underwear.  I’ve tried to talk him out of this bad habit, but no joy.

Last Sunday Abdiel came to shine our day and stayed with us while his father rested from his hyper-active personality  As anticipated, at noon he started complaining about how hot it was.  He was so passionate about this issue, that I decided to create artificial rain and calm his lamentations.

I went to the backyard and connected our lawn sprinkler and told Abdiel to dance under the  squirts of water  It was love at first sight.  In an instant, he was the happiest kid on the block, running and dancing around the sprinkler.

Since I’m always close to my Birthday camera, I took this photograph of his water bliss.  Take a look.

Abdiel, dancing in the artificial rain on a sizzling Sunday afternoon.

For this photograph, I decided to make a few changes to my camera’s settings in an effort to understand how it worked and learn from experience.  This is what I did:

• Switched from Auto Mode to Program Mode.  This new setting provided me with more manual options.
• Modified  the image resolution from Normal to Super Fine to improve the quality of the image.
• Changed My Colors settings from My Colors Off to Vivid in order to obtain sharper colors.

The results are there for your assessment.  As they say, the only way to learn how to ride a bike is by getting a few bruises.

If your days are too cold where you live, come on down to Panama.  You’ll love it.  Good Day.

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Photograph: Rainy Night

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Photograph: Executive Rain Funnel

This can happen to just anybody if the rain and the wind are just right.

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Photograph: Rainy Day

(Credit: Pixdaus, God Gave Us Pics!)

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