Cowboy Tendencies

Old corrals evoke a sense of the west like few other things.  They're icons of a rough, tumble and self-reliant life on the American frontier.  In lots of ways that man against the elements sensibility still lingers in today’s western life.  And I do I believe that every boy wants to be a cowboy.  It's been true with me since my first pair of boots from Porter’s Western Store in the Santa Rita Hotel in downtown Tucson.  The year would have been 1951 if memory serves.  The smell of saddle leather ranks right up there with corrals, Wranglers and trophy buckles in stirring the cowpoke within.

Corrals like any subject can be photographed from infinite perspectives.  Sometimes, though rarely in my case since I'm such a purist, a little experimentation is in order. Here are a panorama and three other images all of which were made from two to five vertical photographs that have been stitched together.  The intent is to render more detail and acuity without the noise that can occur in very large prints made from smaller files.  My friend Terry Thompson is a master of the process and I claim no authorship of the technique.  

The corral in question resides just off Highway 285 near its junction with the road to Carson.  The ramshackle affair with its Sangre de Cristo backdrop speaks to the vast and epic place that is northern New Mexico.