Outside of photography, I spend quite a lot of my free time riding and working on bikes. This is a picture of the bike I ride every day. I built it to carry camping gear for overnight rides on the Chesapeake and Ohio towpath trail, which starts in Washington, DC and runs all the way to Pittsburgh. There is a lot of fun to be had camping with your bike, and there’s something really amazing about riding from your front door to the campsite without burning a drop of gasoline!

There are more pictures of the bike along the Potomac shoreline here.

The Proyecto Arqueológico Cueca Mirador is the driving force behind the excavation and analysis of the Mirador Basin region of Guatemala, under the direction of Richard Hansen and Edgar Suyac. The National Museum of the American Indian travelled to Guatemala City to talk with Edgar, who is Co-Director of the project, and a pre-eminent scholar of Mayan descent.

I was overjoyed to be back in Guatemala City, and am tremendously thankful for the kindness and hospitality shown us by Edgar, his team of archeologists, and especially his protegé Enrique Hernández who took us on a tour of Guaté following our interview.

Enrique took us to some archeological sites that are associated with Kaminaljuyu, once one of the largest Mayan cities in the world, which now lies buried beneath present-day Guatemala City. Only a few exposed mounds remain of this once great urban center, and some excavations have revealed a rich and elaborate cityscape whose true grandeur may be lost to history forever. What still lives on, however, is the heartbeat of the Mayan people themselves, whose varied and rich culture is still thriving in this splendorous country of hardship and hospitality.

From there, we’ve launched ourselves into Lima, Peru; a dense urban landscape on the dry ocean plain of Peru’s Pacific coast. Tomorrow we have another interview, and then I will depart alone for the Northern Coast, where I hope to spend some time amongst the relics of the Moche culture that pre-dates the majesty of the Incan Empire by many centuries, perhaps visit Cajamarca in the Northern Highlands of the Peruvian Andes, and fit in some time to unwind!

It’s been awhile since I last posted an item to my blog, but I think there’s a new trip you might like to hear about!

Wednesday I’ll be leaving for Guatemala City, the capital of Guatemala. We’ll be shooting an interview there with Edgar Suyac, a Guatemalan archeologist, for an upcoming Smithsonian Exhibition called ‘Infinity of Nations.’ While there I hope to visit Antigua once again, which is one of my favorite Central American cities. It is a beautifully vibrant city located in the Central Highlands just a short trip from the capital that still bears the scars from a volcanic mudflow that devastated the city during the 16th century.

From there, we’ll be flying to Lima, Peru which will be my first time crossing into South America. We’ll buzz right over Costa Rica, which previously was the southernmost country I ever visited.

In Lima, we’ll be shooting an interview with a Quechua historian. The subject matter of this interview is a carved gourd from the Arica region (close to the Chilean border.)

After my work is done, I hope to explore the Northern section of Peru. I have heard terrible stories of deadly land-slides in the region of Cuzco and Machu Picchu, so I have decided to stay away. Transportation is reputedly impossible in some parts of this tourist mecca; and I wouldn’t want to strain an already overwhelmed infrastructure just for my sightseeing pleasures.

There are many interesting sights and experiences in the North: pre-Incan sites hidden in the cloud-forests of Chachapoyas, rich ancient tombs of the Sipán culture around the coastal city of Chiclayo, and the unique contemporary afro-peruvian culture of the Ecuadorian border region. Suffice to say, I am very excited about the journey, and thankful for the opportunity to see this fascinating part of the world.

Please keep an eye here, on my blog, and I will try my best to post updates from the road.

In response to my friend Mark, who has posted an excellently instructional bean-cookery treatise on his likewise excellent blog Professional Human Being, I offer here one of my favorite recipes for beans from the author Edward Abbey (stolen, as the author would have wanted it, from another blog):

**********

Victoria McCabe
19 May 1973

Dear Victoria,
Herewith my bit for your cookbook. This recipe is not original but a variation on an old (perhaps ancient) Southwestern dish. It has also been a favorite of mine and was for many years the staple, the sole staple, of my personal nutritional program. (I am six feet three and weigh 190 pounds, sober.)

I call it Hardcase Survival Pinto Bean Sludge.

1. Take one fifty-pound sack Colorado pinto beans. Remove stones, cockleburs, horseshit, ants, lizards, etc. Wash in clear cold crick water. Soak for twenty-four hours in iron kettle or earthenware cooking pot. (DO NOT USE TEFLON, ALUMINUM OR PYREX CONTAINER. THIS WARNING CANNOT BE OVERSTRESSED.)

2. Place kettle or pot with entire fifty lbs. of pinto beans on low fire and simmer for twenty-four hours. (DO NOT POUR OFF WATER IN WHICH BEANS HAVE BEEN IMMERSED. THIS IS IMPORTANT.) Fire must be of juniper, pinyon pine, mesquite or ironwood; other fuels tend to modify the subtle flavor and delicate aroma of Pinto Bean Sludge.

3. DO NOT BOIL.

4. STIR VIGOROUSLY FROM TIME TO TIME WITH WOODEN SPOON OR IRON LADLE. (Do not disregard these instructions.)

5. After simmering on low fire for twenty-four hours, add one gallon green chile peppers. Stir vigorously. Add one quart natural (non-iodized) pure sea salt. Add black pepper. Stir some more and throw in additional flavoring materials, as desired, such as old bacon rinds, corncobs, salt pork, hog jowls, kidney stones, ham hocks, sowbelly, saddle blankets, jungle boots, worn-out tennis shoes, cinch straps, whatnot, use your own judgment. Simmer an additional twenty-four hours.

6. Now ladle as many servings as desired from pot but do not remove pot from fire. Allow to simmer continuously for hours, days or weeks if necessary, until all contents have been thoroughly consumed. Continue to stir vigorously, whenever in vicinity or whenever you think of it.

7. Serve Pinto Bean Sludge on large flat stones or on any convenient fairly level surface. Garnish liberally with parsley flakes. Slather generously with raw ketchup. Sprinkle with endive, anchovy crumbs and boiled cruets and eat hearty.

8. One potful Pinto Bean Sludge, as above specified, will feed one poet for two full weeks at a cost of about $11.45 at current prices. Annual costs less than $300.

9. The philosopher Pythagoras found flatulence incompatible with meditation and therefore urged his followers not to eat beans. I have found, however, that custom and thorough cooking will alleviate this problem.

Yrs, Edward Abbey—Tucson

The other day I got a new video camera! I am incredibly impressed with it, and ran out to shoot video of my front yard using this very nice cine lens, a Cooke Speed Panchro 18mm Ser. III.

I’ll write more about my experiences with this camera in upcoming posts, but for now I’ll just say, ‘wow!’

Relevant details:

From Mackinaw City; taken while chewing a stick a’ Blackjack licorice gum.

Photograph by Marlin Lum

Reflectance Transformation Imaging, or RTI, is a computational photographic technique that produces detailed computer models of surfaces from photographs. Typically, when capturing a sequence of RTI photographs, one places the camera on a stable platform and takes many pictures while moving a light source around the object one wants to model. From these photographs, computer software is able to analyze the subject and generate a topographical model. This model can then be interactively re-lit or manipulated to produce highly detailed images. Oftentimes the RTI model conveys far more information than any single photograph that went into its production. You can think of it as a powerful method of analyzing surfaces; more powerful than any photograph could possibly be.

For many fields of scientific or cultural inquiry, such robust analysis is exciting and meaningful. Think of a painting conservator able to see new detail in brushstrokes on the surface of a canvas; or an archeologist divining new insights into the methods used to produce a petroglyph far out in the field. Such new methods of seeing hold the potential to unlock new knowledge, and greatly facilitate important scholarship.

In the spirit of advancing these methods, the National Museum of the American Indian participated in a grant from the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training to bring the non-profit group Cultural Heritage Imaging to Washington DC for a week of hands-on instruction in RTI.

On June 8-11, 2009 I joined Mark Christal (Multimedia Co-ordinator for the NMAI), a group of conservators from our museum and the Museum Conservation Institute, and the staff of C-H-I to learn the techniques involved in capturing a good RTI sequence.

Cultural Heritage Imaging is a 501(c)3 non-profit based in California whose mission is to advance the use of advanced digital imaging techniques in the field of cultural preservation. C-H-I travels the world training archeologists, museum professionals, and material cultural documentation experts in RTI and other imaging techniques.

By the end of our week together, we had generated quite a few excellent RTI sequences which I hope to post to my website soon. Part of the NMAI’s role in the grant was to help generate educational materials for the C-H-I website, in order to facilitate future training. Mark and I spent the last day of training with C-H-I staff shooting video clips of the RTI process for the site. It is our hope that future students of RTI will be able to use the clips to better learn the technique.