I started out my trip in Chicago, where I met with some friends and celebrated St. Patty’s day right: with green beer, corned beef, the blood of an irish cat, and all.

After Chicago, I flew to Buenos Aires, Argentina and visited with a couple of my friends who have been living there for several months. I got a great taste of their steak, wine, and street art.

Up until this point in my trip I had been shooting with my (formerly) trusty little Fujica. Sadly, that camera met it’s end in Argentina. A screw holding the baseplate onto the bottom of the camera came loose, and the entire bottom popped off, sending parts all over. Examining it closer, this part of the camera is bafflingly poorly put on. the two screws that held it on were no longer than 2mm, and absolutely tiny. When it fell apart, the rewind release mechanism was lost, and the roll I was shooting was stuck in the camera. Too make matters worse, in my excitement to get the film out, I managed to snap off the film from it’s roll. I had to wait until I got the camera back to Seattle before I could have someone open it in a changing bag, and remove the film.

I had Kyle bring down my spare camera, the Canon AE-1, and Torin let me borrow his Nikon N60 for a few rolls, so the rest of the shots are taken on one of those two cameras. Colombia provided no end of fascinating photo opportunities:

This is one of the few shots I used a fill flash for, because shortly after, I left the flash unit on, and the batteries drained.

When these girls set up this chair in the water, I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed my camera and Kyle’s, and probably took 30 photos of them, combined

We visited Old Mampujan one of the first days I stayed there. A stormed loomed in the sky the entire time we were up there, making for some incredible lighting

Ok, at some point, I’ve got to stop putting photos in this post. It has already gotten too long. I’m finishing of with one more photo. It’s not technically from my trip, I took it before I left Seattle, but I like it so much, I’ve got to post it somewhere:

See the rest of the photos from my trip at Picasa.

The Canon also has a Macro feature that I probably won’t make as much use of as I could:

I ran a roll through the old Canon AE-1 that my dad brought up from Salt Lake. I’ve got a batch of expired (2002) Kodak Gold 200 that I intended to run through my ill-fated Smena2 (RIP), so I shot a test roll to get a feel for my new toy:

Aside from a lot of fingers in the frame, and a few under-exposed shots, there are a few keepers. It’s all too apparent that 3 years of shooting with shitty russian cameras has destroyed my ability to frame a shot, or set the exposure correctly. These cameras require a lot more attention than I’m used to.