Railroad Buffs at Bibb Overall Convention

Two Thursdays ago I met my photographer friend at the junction of US 285 and 64 in dusty Tres Piedras.  TP, as we call it is, a bastion of off the gridders who favored habitation would appear to be an old school bus.  Daryl Black and her husband Fred built an energy efficient, architectural show piece in TP but are not of the former persuasion.  The Blacks are just hip to sustainability and a fairly pared down life style in which where’s plenty of adventure and luxury and no waste that I can see. They drive the speed limit to conserve gas for heaven's sake.

So, Daryl and I convened at about 7am in front of the now closed gas station and diner, shot a few frames and decided to head north on 285 toward Antonito, the terminus of the Cumbres and Toltec Railroad.  There was no plan but to follow our instincts to wherever.  Whenever.

All the images are from the Cumbres and Toltec’s two railyards, the other being over the pass in Chama, New Mexico.  It’s the pass we drove to get to Chama ourselves and where we saw the second engine plowing up the west flank to get the train over the pass.  It's so steep it takes two coal burners to top out.

Special Edition

Cruz Blanca

A couple of shows are looming, one of them opens this Thursday, September 1^st at the Historic Taos Inn and will run through October.  The exhibition curated by the inn’s owner Carolyn Haddock is titled “Photographs of Light Landscape and Legend” referring to elements that have made Taos and northern New Mexico an art Mecca for over 100 years.  I ‘m delighted to be in the company of three of Taos’ photography luminaries; Lenny Foster, Gus Foster (not related) and Kathleen Brennan.

You're getting late notice since I just learned of the thing myself. I'm Living on Taos Time I think.

Pecan Grove #1

Opening September 23 and through October 3 is Taos Fall Arts Festival, the cornerstone of our vibrant fall art season and the year’s largest single art event.  My images Pecan Grove #1 and #2 have been juried into Taos Select, formerly Taos Invites Taos.

Bylines from Byways

In the next couple of months you’ll see more frequent entries and more pics.  Soon we’ll be ensconced in lovely Baudinard sur Verdon or on the backroads of France.  So just to prime the pump, here are images from the blue highways of northern New Mexico with pal Jeff Curto last weekend.  Jeff who is a nationally recognized photographer and teacher was a fount of knowledge, of course, and it was most intriguing to see how differently we each approached the same subject.  It’s been said that if you give five photographers the mission of duplicating a very specific set of shots you’ll get five very different sets of shots because we’re each wired uniquely. So true.

These are from tried and true locales; ones you’ve seen here before.  That’s because I was playing tour god, er guide, with Jeff and we were hitting Taos icons; in this case La Hacienda de los Martinez circa 1804.  

Th milky quality of image two is due to a Neutral Density Filter.  I was hoping to catch even more cloud blur with exposure times up to 30 seconds in bright sun.  Alas the sky was nearly still.

Next time travels with Daryl Black.

Injection Molded

I was photographing with friend and noted photographer/educator Jeff Curto this morning.  A rare treat since Jeff hails from Chicagoland.  Anyway we were discussing the photographer’s imperative of looking literally everywhere in the scene to find an element or composition that attracts and that may also be may be different than any that came before.  This is a tall task when plowing well tilled turf like Ranchos Church, last week’s subject.  It means, in effect, look beyond the obvious, perfectly functional money shot and find a unique perspective.  Today’s image is simply a stack of discarded fiberglass chairs lying on the ground.  When shot up close and personal they’re quite abstract and not instantly identifiable as chairs but as patterns and textures and shadows which are pleasing in and of themselves and not because they’re chairs.  The scene was the rail yard of the Cumbres and Toltec Railroad but the image you see has no such context.

In Living Color

The peripatetic John Farnsworth asked to see Moon Over Ranchos as originally shot, in glowing russet hues. This one's for you, mon amis.

Moon Over Ranchos

Every few months I’m bound to give you another taste of Ranchos Church, officially San Francisco de Asis.  This one happened just moments after the sun fell below the horizon behind me, bathing the church in a divine glow.  The magic light is cast so evenly over the adobe skin that it reveals every blemish and vein of the mud and straw. The soft shadows seem to caress the church's famous buttresses.