Sinclair put the Sinclair in Wyoming

I got a latish start on my long awaited trip to the Heart Mountain Internment Camp near Cody, Wyoming. That allowed for a sleepover in Fort Collins before really getting on the road in earnest. As usual my route plan was sketchy. It’s better that way.

Along about Cheyenne, just 45 minutes above Fort Collins I opted for a couple of hours of I-80 to Rawlins where I would turn north in the general direction of Cody.

Then maybe ten miles east of Rawlins I spied the minarets of a major industrial something or other. “Eureka” I thought. Thermonuclear blight is right up my alley. I got off at the next off ramp to find out who or what was trashing the pristine high desert. What sinister robber baron was having his way with the natural world?

At the nominal first intersection I saw that the town’s name was Sinclair. That alone was not noteworthy till the dim reaches of my dim brain computed that this was, if not the home of Sinclair Oil, at least a satellite branch of same. That there would be a flame belching behemoth of petro production astride the steppes of southeastern Wyoming did not induce amazement either. This, after all, is the state where precisely one third of all pick-up trucks say Halliburton on the door.

Tidy little Sinclair population 437 is a company town. It exists solely to provide labor to Sinclair Oil. At last count there exactly were two commercial enterprises in the town, a Mexican restaurant and the bar called the Corner Bar. If you lived in Sinclair you could live without the Mexican joint.

The Spanish colonial PARCO Hotel circa 1925 has long been stuttered and now houses a fundamentalist Christian church.

Next stop Heart Mountain.

Alter Ego

Apropos of absolutely nothing and mostly because I’ve been on the road for a week and can’t find my words here’s a simple portrait of esteemed Taos photographer Lenny Foster. Lenny is a smiling kind of guy so showing a little attitude in this one seems like a good idea.

Baudinard Fog

My medium telephoto reveals a trip to France in the near future, maybe September. And so, an image from our last sojourn in Provence, that would have been 2011, seems most appropriate today. The photograph is from our little street in Baudinard, the lovely Chemin d’Artignosc. And on this lazy summer weekend I am the soul of brevity. Do I hear applause and murmurs of appreciation?

Members of the Wedding

These images, with all their flaws, reveal unfettered happiness. Yes, my shutter speed didn’t quite stop the action, a little flash would have softened the contrast and that tree trunk interferes big time but, man, those guys were literally jumping for joy. It was life affirming somehow and made me feel good about the human animal at a time when positive signs are all too rare. Kudos to the intrepid wedding photog who choreographed this high stepping sprint down Peachtree Avenue in Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood. It took all of my considerable persuasive powers to get them to do that.

Famous last words

A couple of years back I had a brief flirtation with long exposures. I had just purchased a graduated neutral density filter with which I planned to make really long exposures, thirty seconds and more, even in bright daylight. Sad to say, I’ve done little with the device since. There’s always tomorrow I reckon.

The effect on these images of the Martinez Hacienda in Taos is to render a milky sky and richly textured adobe. The hacienda had just received a fresh coat of mud so the earthen colors were particularly robust. It appears to me that the long exposures and the moving light creates roundness and volume in the shapes and shadows of the building making it appear even more organic.

 

Long exposures are not for the tripod averse and I am that if nothing else. In our recent sojourn to Spain the thing was effective ballast at best. Next time will be different.