Pandemic Full Moon August 2020

Hello Folks, 
I am back with a few pictures of the full moon last night here in Santiago, Chile.
We are still under quarantine with no end in sight but I did manage to get a three hour police pass take my first bike ride since March 16th and got some good miles in and bought some much needed beer, wine and pisco. Chocolate, cookies and a few other 'quality' items were also picked up and added to our closet for my wife and I to enjoy in the late hours.
Enjoy!

 This is the moon coming up over the east and the Andean Mountains Cordillera.

Quarantine Day 98: Winter At Last!

   Hello Folks,

we have been under quarantine for 98 days now and there is no end in sight as the infection rates keep soaring. In this past week, we have had as many people infected as we have had in the previous three months and the death toll is getting very grave.  Since the vast majority of people unable to go into the streets and take mass transit or drive in their automobiles the pollution levels are very low for this time of year. Usually, with the cold air inversion created by the Andean Mountains, a thick bowl of dark grey thick pollution is trapped within the city limits and many people, especailly children and elderly suffer from chronic lung problems associated with it. The pollution is so thick that you can see the swirl of filth whenever a bus goes by down the street spewing yet more diesel fumes and if you were to go up into the mountains for some fresh air you will look back down upon the city and only sea a large sea of grey.  As you can see from these images, we have been getting a nice amount of rain in the city these past few night which means lots of snow in the cordillera.  And with limits on people's mobility we have clean air. Probably the cleanest air since the invention of the carbon combustable machine(automobiles).  

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   Mind you these mountains may look huge, but in reality they are only the lower ranges of some really monstrous mountains that lay just behind them with Aconcagua at a height of 6,962 meters(22,841 feet) the largest mountain in South America just off to the North East of these in the pictures. I use to be able to lay in bed in my old apartment and view a glacier which was at around 20,000 feet sea level back in 2003-4.  

   The Andes name comes from the Quechua word anti, meaning east. The Andes is a 4,300 mile-long mountain range located in South America that straddles seven countries, namely Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela. 

   South American cities of La Paz, Mérida, Sucre, Medellín, Arequipa, Bogotá, and Quito are some of the major cities on its many plateaus.

Nightlife In The Pandemic

Hi again folks,
I felt motivated by the sunset and pink purple colors on the buildings so I grabbed my camera and went for it. Not much to work with other than a couple of angle but with a zoom and several lenses and a little bit of Photoshop I managed to salvage a few good shots out of the sun setting over downtown Santiago.

 The wire mesh keeps little kids from falling out but sort of messes up some shots. I tend to use it to symbolize the quarantine which keeps up inside for how long we do not know.

 This is the Virgin atop the San Cristobal.

 That purple-orange-pink sky was awesome yet sort of sad at the same time.

 I took these next few shot through two windows out onto the street below.

With a slow exposure.

And even slower exposure

 And with a really slow exposure

The traffic backs up coming off the giant boulevard and out of a tunnel.

The Virgin shines all night long over the city.

 The cityscape at night is pretty cool from our view.

Life in the Pandemic

View From the Pandemic 

Civil Unrest in Santiago Chile

 My long time buddy Jonathan Franklin and I went into the streets to check out the latest developments in the ongoing civil unrest just around the corner from where I live. It was a wild night taking pictures of the people in pitched rock battles with the police who have this little metal road warrior motor vehicle called the "Skunk" that comes charging into the mob of rock tossers and blasts everybody with heavy doses of tear gas and sometimes shot gun pellets. Fortunately, I was able to 'not' get hit with the any projectiles but I did eat tear gas all night long. Regardless of being half blind most of the night, I managed to capture some of the images of what is going on here in Chile where there has been an ongoing civil unrest since last October.

We had a beer and prepared our equipment prior to taking off into the night to photograph the riot. Jonathan was ready for the night with this mask he bought in the street and I had a paper particle mask to fend off the tear gas.

This is my friend and the man that got me to come down to Chile Jonathan Franklin, a journalist of the gonzo variety. Here he dons his roller blades that he uses to cover these type of events. I rode my bike.

The area that I reside in is just a couple blocks from the main protestor meeting zone called Plaza Italia and a few blocks from Palacio deLa Moneda, which is the country's presidential palace. Most of the civil unrest in Santiago starts in between these two areas along the giant boulevard called la Alameda and eventually bleeds onto the side streets where people sat up barricades. Much of these picture took place on the side streets.

In this image below, the protestors were hanging out around a corner of a street where they would then run into and toss rocks, use slingshots, build fire barricades and launch molotov cocktails at the police down the block. Once you peek out behind that corner you could get hit with a rock, have a lamp post come down on your head or have the "pacos" cops blast you with tear gas riot gun shot round or meet the dirty water a armalite's water canon. 

Jonathan breaches the corner heads into the zone of violence to check out what is going on.

 This young lady was crossing thru the battle area and had received a face full of gas for her troubles.

I stepped into the zone of violence once my eyes adapted to the tear gas and tried to capture what was gong on.

The police were just down the block and had just made a mad dash at the protestors with the Skunk spewing thick streams of gas at everybody. This is just after the gas had pretty much cleared out and the cops retreated down the way again.

Jonathan gingerly makes his way through the rubble in the road.

 These people are volunteers that help out the wounded people that can get overwhelmed tear gas, blinded by a projectile or ran over by a cop driving through the mob with their heavy duty metal war machines. 

Just down the street, the folks had captured a slow moving bus and were taking it apart and pretty much having a party onboard. I am glad they decided not to burn it up as it was just below some apartments and those folks do not need that.

Jonathan got onboard the captured bus and was interviewing people

 Punk rock chic is cheering on the mob of protestors.

 

 We ran into Jonathan's daughter Susan Franklin Casanova and like tens of thousands of school aged children and college kids, Susan is actively involved in this movement to bring about equality to this neo-liberal country.

   

This is la Alameda and the main street that runs down the heart of the giant city and it was shut down for blocks. 

Sometime later in the evening, we headed over to Carabinero calle which sits next to San Borja Parque which lately, always seems to be a war zone. I lasted over here for about fifteen minutes as the Skunk came ripping down the street and blasted us with gas and since I only had a particle mask I was pretty much out of there when I regained my sight.