I have included locations, technical details, and some notes on each picture. The photographs were taken with one of three cameras Jean’s fz8, my fz50, or my lx-2. All are Panasonic digital cameras with Leica DC Vario-Elmarit ƒ/2.8 lenses and Optical Image Stabilization. The two fzs have 12x telephoto (35/36 to 420/432 mm). My two cameras, fz50 and lx-2, have a max of 10 mp and Jean’s goes to 8 mp at full frame.
This group of pictures includes one of Jean’s photos, two taken with the FZ50, and the other nine with the LX-2. You might question why the smaller, pocket camera gets more use. The two main reasons are: it is handy to carry for a quick foray from the RV and it takes a wider angle (28 mm vs 35 mm). Both cameras have the same Leica lens and image stabilization; the small camera is better at close-ups, but the larger one is better for telephoto (420 vs 112 mm)—as a result the smaller one tends to get used more often.
All photographs were edited in Apple’s iPhoto 6 and Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 4. (I do not bring the full Photoshop with me on my MacBook laptop.) I am not trying make a record of the scene, but rather create a picture that can be appreciated on its own merits. Sometimes I succeed…
Ghost ShipIn our efforts to find the best place from which to photograph the four mile distant Shiprock monument at sunset, we drove back and forth for 10 miles along the highway looking for the perfect foreground and side of this monolith. At each stop, I would jump out and snap a shot with the LX-2 (the FX50 was mounted on a tripod). We did find just the right place and took a beautiful shot of The Rock glowing red in the sunset, but my favorite from the shoot is this image, “Ghost Ship”… looking for a port these millions of years.
Taos AlleyAs we wandered about in the old part of Taos after Mass on a bright, sunny, and, of course, hot Sunday, the uniformity of the style of the buildings struck us: the flat roofs, rectangular units, and smooth round corners in earth colors. I think of this little alley to “AMIGOS BRAVOS Friends of the Wild Rivers” as typical of what I saw in Taos.
San Francisco de AsísGeorgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams had their favorite view of this church, and I have mine. When the people of the colony built this church 200 years ago, they were not concerned with photogenic buttresses, but rather the cross and its significance to their lives. It’s a picture that I seem to appreciate more each time I study it.
The Inn & Spa at LorettoI know very little about architecture, but I marvel every time I see this motel/hotel, how everything that would be found in a first class hotel is connected—without any exterior ladders! The native people lived in this sort of village for a thousand years and arranged traffic flow simply by using many ladders and lots of carrying to solve the utilities problem. The architect had to provide ways for people to move easily from one part to another as well as equip each room with water, sewer, electricity, telephone , cable TV, internet, heating and cooling ducts, dumb waiters, elevators, stairs (no ladders), etc.—WOW!
Pots in a Santa Fe MarketJean enjoys looking at the beautiful and clever crafts that people create, whether jewelry, pottery, painting, weaving or clothing. It is impractical to purchase many, for there is only room in our home to display a few. Photographing beauty is another way to fix it in the mind and a means of possessing and enjoying it.
We can understand the feeling of crafts people who refuse you the right to photograph their products or themselves, but it is frustrating. In Santa Fe, NM, native people have the right to sell their crafts along the portico of the Governor’s Palace, but they won’t be photographed. The larger market areas are impersonal, with more opportunity for photography. Several tables of delicately colored rainbow pots allowed freedom of movement to find a good angle without anyone objecting to photography.
Dunes at SunsetWhite sand (OK, gypsum) dunes are not very colorful; black & white photography using an orange or red filter to bring up the blue shadows should be the medium of choice. But ever since the invention of Kodachrome, RIP, we think in terms of color. I have paid my dues, spending many long hours (with my number one assistant—from whom I would steal a kiss every so often under the dim red light) hunched over the enlarger and swishing the trays of corrosive chemicals, even as late as the early 80s. Now I enjoy color and the ease with which we manipulate the image. In the black & white darkroom, maybe it took 45 minutes to crop, burn in sections, hold back other parts; each maneuver calculated in seconds by your GraLab timer—and then find one of the procedures didn’t work quite right, or it’s too contrasty, or whatever—back to the easel.
Rio GrandeAs we chugged up the 16+% grade (my gage is not accurate over 16%), we suddenly came upon this breath-taking lookout. (The Rialta has a real low first gear (of four) unlike its predecessor, the Le Sharo, which we owned for four years and occasionally got stuck in.) The view was really awesome—sort of like your first look into the Grand Canyon, only in this case, clear and crisp. There were many gorgeous and impressive scenes along the 50 winding miles of the Camino del Rio in Big Bend Rancho State Park.
Cerro CastellanCerro Castellan is a beautiful, colorful mountain very near the Rio Grande and Mexican border. The Park maintains a store and campground without hookups here, but at 110° in the shade and generators not allowed, not surprisingly, there were no campers.
SilverleafJean has become so proficient at taking pictures of flowers, I devote my attention to other subjects. But every so often I am intrigued by a floral subject. The hairiness of the flower and softness of the silvery leaves enticed me to shoot a few shots, hand-held, of this bush against the colorful mountains of Burro Mesa Pouroff (“hanging valley”) and then a medium shot. When I saw all the detail in the flower, I cropped the medium shot to a close-up. (Leucophyllum frutescens)
MillipedeWe were down at Rio Grande Village on a Nature Trail through a swampy area of the river with temperature hovering around 115° so the man in the air conditioned store told us and of course, the humidity at 150%, if that’s possible. (“It isn’t possible,” the science teacher in me said—but that’s what it felt like!) Jean was busy in her sweat shop piling up records of jungle plants and I was working on scenes from the swamp with the picturesque Mexican mountains in the background.
Then I was distracted by this millipede running along trail—when you watch the legs, the beast always seem to be moving a at great speed. I took a few shots, then let it alone for a few minutes, but when I turned back to see where the millipede had gone, I found it had artistically draped itself on this small plant; now here is something from which to make a picture! My sister-in-law, Marian Cortesi, saw the blog and reminded us of the name used in Malawi, Africa for this creature, “bongololo”. The word seems to hurry along like the creature itself does.
Casa GrandeCasa Grande Mountain at 7,325 feet was an arresting sight every time I looked out the window or stepped out the door—there it was! As the day wore on , the mount’s color became richer and richer, ‘til at sunset it was awesome! (Be sure to click on this picture to enlarge it to get the full impact,)
Sunset over Casa GrandeThe evening started quietly enough with a few slightly pink clouds in the West, so I put on shoes and went out into the gathering twilight to look for a picturesque foreground. After moving around the campground for close to a half hour, the sky began to cloud up, and slowly but surely take on sunset colors.
At 9 p.m., suddenly the whole sky from east to west was on fire! Orange was the predominant hue; brilliant yellows and fiery reds were there too. Some places seem to have blue sky, but it was hard to tell with the blazing clouds all around. This picture was taken at 9:01:47; my first picture of the sunset color was 8:48 and the last at 9:12 p.m.
I have only seen comparable sunsets a few times in my life; two I remember: in the early 1950s at 12,000 feet hiking on the the Pacific Crest Trail near Mt. Koip looking east over the June Lake area and the other was nearby from Lee Vining, California, again looking east over Mono Lake and the Mono Craters in the early 1980s. It would be interesting, but not likely to ever happen, to go through our some 60,000 slides to find all the sunsets and sunrises we have taken pictures of over the years in many parts of the world.
