The photo here shows Dr Nicholas exploring a swamp-like, bog-like ecosystem in the far west edge of Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo. We do research on plants and animals (and insects and reptiles) at this park one week every month. We had just noticed a white flower that we had never previously seen in the previous 10 months work in this park. The only way to get close enough to photograph it was to wade into abyss (and hope it was not “neck deep”). Fortunately it was only knee-deep.
FLAAR Mesoamerica is a division of FLAAR that is devoted to studying flora and fauna and ecosystems of Guatemala. FLAAR itself was incorporated as a non-profit research and educational institution in 1969 to map the Mayan pyramids, temples, and palaces of Yaxha, an ancient city between Tikal and the border with Belize. From 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, and 1974, FLAAR together with Miguel Orrego and capable students from Guatemala and USA, worked to protect the fragile ecosystems here and Nicholas encouraged the then president of Guatemala and the FYDEP director of the Peten area to declare Laguna Yaxha and Laguna Sacnab as a parque nacional. The initial declaration was accomplished in 1974. It then took 19 more years to create the full size of the park as it is today; other individuals and other NGOs did this work in the 1980’s and 1990’s (so the park got Naranjo area added) and everything was finalized in the early 1990’s, 20 years after we initiated the idea in the 1970’s of protecting the ruins and the flora and fauna as a national park.
FLAAR-REPORTS is a division of FLAAR that was developed in the late 1990’s when Dr Nicholas Hellmuth was awarded a Visiting Research Professor grant and 6-month position at Japan’s national museum of ethnology in Osaka. The project in Japan was to teach the staff at the museum how to scan (digitize) and handle photographs in the museum’s archive (Nicholas was a photographer since age 16, and especially at age 19 when he worked at Tikal for 12 months).
So we have different teams of capable and experienced individuals working on separate projects: flora and fauna in Guatemala; inkjet printers, inks, printable materials, cutters, laminators, etc around the world. And a third division, MayanToons, which writes and illustrates books in Spanish, English, and local Mayan languages for local schools in remote rural areas of Guatemala.
Dr Nicholas Hellmuth studing Sagittaria lancifolia in Savanna of 3 Fern Species, at far west end of Parque Nacional Yaxha Naranjo Nakum, south of Laguna Perdida (and north of Laguna Lankaja).
Click here to open Sagittaria lancifolia on a close-up shoot.
Apollo ink sample print in their booth at APPPEXPO 2019 in Shanghai.
Last week Pablo M. Lee (inkjet ink evaluation manager) and Dr Nicholas were flown to India to visit ink factory, pigment production factory (pigments are main ingredients in inkjet ink), visit bottling factory and the very impressive R&D labs and facilities of A.T. Inks, in Vadodara area of India.
A.T. Inks is the brand name of Rex-Tone Industries Ltd. In addition to being shown all the chemistry and production facilities, the host kindly provided car-and-driver so we could visit historically and culturally important parts of India, especially around Delhi, plus a change to experience a 550 year old fortress palace by staying there as a hotel on the last night in this remarkable country.
A.T. Inks will be printing color samples for FLAAR and sending these to Guatemala. We will then donate these to Mayan schools in remote rural areas of Guatemala and will donate the panorama photos of Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo to the park administrators and to other entities associated with the park.
Dr Nicholas and Pablo M. Lee are en route to China to inspect a new ink that they learned about at APPPEXPO 2019 in Shanghai last month.
This ink, from APOLLO ink company, is for outdoor printing yet the ink is not solvent-based and not needing UV-curing.
FLAAR is working with the park administrators of Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo on their educational signs for part visitors, so learning about new inks is helpful. Most outdoor signs fade quickly from the sunlight.
Apollo ink sample print in their booth at APPPEXPO 2019 in Shanghai.
We will issue a full report on Apollo ink company and their ink when we return from China.
Setting up a T-shirt company in your basement, garage, or home-office is increasingly popular. So the team at FLAAR (USA) and FLAAR Mesoamerica (Guatemala) are doing research to prepare an educational series of publications on how to get started in T-shirt printing. We will discuss differences between toner printers for T-shirts, sublimation ink T-shirt printers, and pigment ink T-shirt printers.
Attending APPPEXPO 2019 in Shanghai was a helpful printer trade show because more than 17 brands of T-shirt printers were on exhibit. They ranged from T-shirt printers to get started, T-shirt printers for step by step evolving to a regular T-shirt business, and T-shirt printers for serious production full-time. I would like to start with suggestions for a first-time T-shirt printer: Ricoh Ri 100 is one to look at for sure. An additional first-time T-shirt printer using toner is the new BINTERJET technology using vixde brand laser beat transfer media. What I liked about BINTERJET was the ability to add lustrous metallic-like color.
As soon as we have a contact at Ricoh and access to their T-shirt printer, we will write a full report and show the results possible with a Ricoh T-shirt printer.
Here is Nicholas with the developer of the lustrous ability of an updated toner printer with software and materials from BINTERJET.
Contact is Hadiprawiro Bono, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
As soon as we have this entire BINTERJET system in our FLAAR Mesoamerica offices we will write a report.
Once we have an in-house team acquire experience with T-shirt printing, we would like to work together with local people’s associations in rural areas of Peten and Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, to provide training so they can set up their own T-shirt companies to provide income for their families. Our goal will be to focus on showing the local tropical flowers, local birds, and local foxes, armadillos, agouti, etc. to encourage protecting local flora and fauna.
Updated April 4, 2019, First posted March 18, 2019
There are two well known cenote-like openings in the karst surface of the west end of Lake Yaxha. I call these the South-West Cenote and the North-West Cenote. I spell the directions as two words deliberately: both are at the west end of the lake. One is north of the lake (about 80 meters); the other is south of the lake (about 200 meters).
Both are totally filled with water (they are at the lake level; these are not like the grand cenote of Chichen Itza (where you see the water only far below)). The one cenote is between 94 and 98 feet deep, so almost 30 meters deep).
I call them a cenote because the opening is the perfect size and shape of a cenote opening (I know cenotes from childhood, in the karst area of Missouri; we have a perfect Maya style cenote behind our house: about 40 to 50 feet down into the limestone, and the water is only at the bottom (flowing in and out via a cave sprint).
Now I have discovered what I call a “Triple Conjoined Cenote” or “triple-conjoined circular lagoons” (if geologists determine they were not cenotes thousands of years ago). The triple-conjoined circular shape is visible on Google Maps (satellite view) and even more visible on aerial photographs of the Instituto Geografico Nacional (Guatemala).
If a benefactor could provide us with a Phase One digital aerial camera, Capture One software, and powerful new computer to handle the RAW images, then we could help the institute do special coverage of the parks area of Peten (LiDAR technology removes the vegetation digitally; we need to see every single tree, every bush, in a higher resolution than any satellite system or higher than any normal government system does in these remote areas.
Photos with a Phase One iXU-RS1900 Aerial Camera (the best); or at least a Phase One iXM-RS150F, would literally change our understanding of the “Mayan rain forest ecosystems.”
Kit would include iX Controller MK III with Gyro Stabilized Mounts.
Phase One Industrial, is a division of Phase One medium format camera company, Denmark.
The triple-conjoined circular lagoons are above (north of) one of the lakes (Laguna Lankaja) to the west of the west end of Lake Yaxha. There is a bog-like aguadas-like area a few meters south of the Lake of Three Cenotes. Local people call the triple conjoined lakes Laguna Perdida.
In March we hiked many hours to reach this area (led by capable park rangers Teco and Prudencio). We had to climb up a ravine from past Laguna Lankaja; climb uphill to the Laguna Perdida area. How is water this high at the top of the hill? And why are the triple-conjoined circular lagoons filled even in the dry years? (we checked Google’s 20-year set of images; water every year). Of course if there is a spring below the water pressure could force the water up, but I am obviously not a geologist. So our goal is to show this to the world and encourage geologists to measure its depth (and double-check the North-West Cenote of Lake Yaxha since one person told us “it was not very deep.”
Teco (Moises Daniel Perez Diaz), a helpful park ranger, told us about a collapsed cave that takes out water from the north edge of Lake Yaxha. So there is a lot for a geologist to study here (especially for a PhD dissertation, with the geological fault overlooking the East of Nakum Savanna a major chapter.
There may be a better geological word for these round areas; I am using the word cenote-like circular-shaped until I learn a better word.
This is the tip top of the geological fissure (at the top of the flat hill); a few hundred meters onward, it is a steep fractured cliff, so dangerous that we did not want to get close to take a photo down into the abyss. Photo by Dr Nicholas Hellmuth using an iPhone Xs.
While hiking from Nakum to discover a previously undocumented grass savanna we had to survive walking across an impressive geological fault line. The limestone hill was literally split and there was a deep ravine on one side.
We hope that geologists can come here and map this fault line. Geological fault lines we well known in Guatemala but this particular stretch is potentially never before seen and never before photographed. I have never seen anything like this in the Tikal national park (adjacent to the PNYNN).
This is one more example that Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo offers a lot more than the monumental Mayan architecture of the several great Mayan cities within this park: now you can see the most impressive geological fault line I have ever experienced.
You can see that Yaxha is associated with geological events since one entire part of one of the main plazas is sunken (in front of Stela 11, the Tlaloc warrior king stela).
Our photos of the fault line east of Nakum are just snapshots of the top because our goal was to explore the unexpected and unprecedented grass savanna below.
FLAAR REPORTS is a team of experienced individuals who do research and educational publications on wide-format inkjet printing techniques, equipment, and workflow. We have over 20 years experience working around the world (Japan, Taiwan, China, Dubai, Turkey, South Africa, across EU, USA, Canada, Mexico, Central America and Brazil). FLAAR REPORTS evolved from FLAAR since Nicholas has been a leader in photography of pre-Columbian civilizations since 1965 (he started photography in 1961, as a backpacker in Mexico, at Palenque). Gradually FLAAR REPORTS is evolving its own programs as FLAAR itself focuses more on endangered ecosystems, endangered animals, and the remarkable wild edible plants of the Mayan areas of Guatemala.
The FLAAR REPORTS team has visited factories that develop and produce digital printers of every size, shape, and technology (including toner printers). Although we focus primarily on wide format inkjet, two of us have experience with T-shirt printers, heat presses, and all the inks and toners to print T-shirts.
Because of our experience we are hired by trade shows, manufacturers, and other companies around the world (it also helps to have almost a million people who read our network of educational websites on wide-format inkjet printing). But what helps even more is that we are independent: we help printshop owners and managers, we assist distributors, and developers and manufacturers, to know more than just the good features of a project or a technology; we politely point out the weak or inadequate or aspects that should be improved.
During print expos (printer and visual communication trade shows) Nicholas has print samples produced to judge edge splatter and color spectrum capability. After he checks these, he flies these print samples back to Guatemala, and drives them into the remote jungle and mountain areas to donate the prints to local schools. Last week we visited two schools in the Rio Cahabon area: both schools had FLAAR produced prints on the walls of many classrooms in each school. We thank efi, Konica Minolta, Mimaki, Handtop, Teckwin, Gongzheng, and other companies for doing sample prints 3.2m and 5m wide that we can donate to the schools in areas where Dr Nicholas works when he is not at trade shows or conferences.
We also appreciate the assistance of OKI, Ricoh, and Xerox in printing samples of our MayanToons books for primary schools in Guatemala. Plus the T-shirt printer and T-shirt heat press companies for providing print samples in their booths.
The FLAAR REPORTS team is heading to APPPEXPO in Shanghai since this is the largest wide-format printer expo in the world.
