TEQUILA SHOTS – A Decade’s Best from Zihuatanejo, Mexico

 

It’s been a decade now that Sally and I have been spending a month each year in Zihuatanejo, that lovely Mexican city—though it’s still easy to think of it as the sleepy little fishing village it was till the early 1970s—on the Pacific coast of Guerrero.

Among the aspects of Zihua that have so enchanted us are its many sensory qualities—colors, smells, sounds, animal, plant life…even the euphonious rhythms of the language—that we just don’t experience back home in Minnesota. Wonders that strike these color-averse, bland-palate, mealy-mouthed products of Northern Europe as truly exotic.

As a career designer and a highly visual person, I suppose I appreciate a place’s visual wonders most of all. Furthermore, there’s something I can readily do to capture and express that visual affinity with Zihuatanejo: I take pictures, lots of pictures.

So it was no mean feat distilling a ten-year anthology of captivating images down to a few representative favorites. So many facets of culture and experience to document; so many esthetic elements to consider—composition, clarity, lighting; and then there are the intangibles, factors like originality, spontaneity, heart.

Here, in no particular order, are my 30 favorite images of the winsome wonders of Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico.