Bringing Photographers Closer to Their Natural World
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San
Miguel de Allende
Located near the geographic center of Old Mexico, 200 miles north of Mexico City and 600 miles south of the Texas border, San Miguel de Allende is a town rich in culture, heritage and history, well known both as the home of the Mexican Independence movement and as a center for the arts. The town lies in the highlands of central Mexico, in the state of Guanajuato, surrounded by a vast plateau of fertile soils and rolling hills, with mountain foothills in the distance to the west to provide spectacular sunsets. This town, more than 400 miles from the nearest beach and without an airport or casino, ranked as Travel and Leisure's sixth favorite city to visit and Conde Nast Traveler's tenth favorite city in the world and fourth favorite in the Americas. The year-round weather is nearly flawless, with an average daytime high in October of 76 degrees Fahrenheit. October is also just after the rainy season, and local flowers are abundant. What an excellent place to get away from the chills of the north. San Miguel is one of Mexico's most captivating colonial towns with its original cobblestone streets, extravagant 16th and 17th century architecture, alluring garden courtyards, dazzling bold colors and spectacular old churches. In the center of the Historic District is a small square called the Jardin, a formal garden with iron benches and sculpted laurel trees that serves as the social hub of San Miguel, where locals gather every night to visit with their neighbors and watch the numerous shows and concerts that occur. On weekend nights, the Jardin hosts the paseo, an endless parade of young people flitting around the square watched by the elders and younger children from the comforts of the iron benches. Virtually all the people are agreeable to being photographed. Around the Jardin are some of the grandest buildings in San Miguel: Ignacio Allende's birthplace, the mansion of the Counts of Canal and La Parroquia, the fabulous gothic parish church. Although sprawl has reached the outskirts of San Miguel, the Historic District and El Centro remain unspoiled, with no traffic lights, no parking meters and no fast food franchises ─ it is much the same as it was a hundred years ago. We will circumnavigate the Historic District and all of the El Centro district by walking the dozens of bumpy cobblestone streets within it. The buildings are adobe, brick, rubble stone mostly covered with stucco or solid hewn stone, often changing from one texture to another half way up the walls. Most homes are one story tall, except for some two-story grand buildings that can be very tall with their ten and twenty foot ceilings. Many dwellings are fortress-like in nature, with the individual rooms often separate structures opening onto a courtyard behind the tall walls that offer entrance only by a single modest doorway opening to the street. It is often difficult to tell which doors open to an extravagant mansion and which ones open to a pile of rubble that may house farm animals. In either case, the doorways are often perfect subjects for our photography.
San Miguel is truly one of the most beautiful towns in Mexico, and part of its charm is derived from the astonishing variety and vivacious colors of its doors. See our Door Gallery for additional examples of the doors of San Miguel. The doors are more often than not set into walls of magnificent colors, patterns and textures. See more of the colors of San Miguel at our Colors and Textures Gallery. The residents of San Miguel find their privacy behind these walls that often hide an inner courtyard, within which can be a vivid microcosm of Mexican life. One extremely good example of this is the lodging establishment we have chosen for this workshop, Casa de la Cuesta. A small sample of those image-making opportunities can be viewed at the Casa de la Cuesta Gallery. For additional information about the style, fees and logistics of this workshop, go to San Miguel Workshop Page. |
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