Double Header

I have two shows opening on Saturday, March 12.  First in importance, no offense to the Museum of the Southwest, is a one person exhibition of my Sketches of Winter portfolio at Wilder Nightingale Fine Art in Taos.  An opening reception will be held from 5-7pm on the 12th.  If you're anywhere near Taos that evening I'd love to see you.

Above is one of the two photographs included in the spring juried show at the Museum of the Southwest in Midland, Texas that also opens March 12.  The other is Single Wides that was last week's post.  The images are from my "At the edge of what's left" series that depicts objects lying at the edge of places that barely skirt oblivion.

Single Wides

Twice on November 11 I was lured off the highway in Navajo country of northeastern Arizona; first by cattle and horses gathered around a stock tank near Cow Springs and second by a row of abandoned trailers with the vast desert beyond. Thinking I was having car trouble a guy on a beater of a bicycle rode out to see if I was okay.  It was truly kind.

Cross Traffic Does Not Stop Here

Snow flurries grew in intensity at the junction of Highways 64 and 285.  The red traffic light glowed against a murky sky.  Across the intersection sat the remains of the gas station, convenience store and a diner that served a mighty fine green chile cheese burger. Welcome to Tres Piedras.  Good bye.

Simplicity

 The Sketches of Winter photographs are inherently sparse and dominated by pristine white fields.  In no example is that aesthetic more evident than in the image dubbed "Simplicity."  Here just the tips of the fence posts pierce the newly fallen snow in Valles Caldera high above Los Alamos.

Puppy Love

Just in case there's any doubt about the affection the daddy and the puppy feel for Cuba, here's a a couple of pics to dispel the notion.  Maybe two pics.  Mucho amor. No?

Victor aka Cuba

In a life affirming demonstration of the importance of getting off the tarmac, the day before yesterday I hung a right toward the mountains and met Victor Hernandez herding 500 borregos north to Antonito, Colorado.  Between my halting Spanish and his sweet, talkative self I learned he'd be herding his woolly charges to Antonito in quatro dias, four days.  That's five miles or so a day. Victor was camping with the sheep, two collies he called the Daddy and the Puppy, pronounced Poopy, and a pistola for los coyotes.  It was a regular time warp.  What the hell year is this?

Anyway, I tried to find out where he had come from and how long he'd been here.  Since he used the words Florida and Zacatecas I deduced he was Mexican.  But about that time his patron Alfonso Abeyta pulled up with a load of firewood and I learned the rest of the story. Victor is, in fact, Cuban and was a boat person who escaped to Florida around 1965. Check. His wife is from Zacatecas. Check. A Cuban shepherd in northern New Mexico.  Makes perfect sense to me.

"I call him Cuba." Patron Alfonso told me.  It's one one heck of a story and a cool nickname to boot.

Blanket of Snow

Photographs of historic Ranchos Church are always in vogue.  The cloak of snow is quiet reminder of the conditions we should have in Taos this time of year.  Instead it's more like late March than mid-January.  The bright sunny forties are mighty lovely but invite a bike ride more than a trip to the slopes.

Coiled and Barbed

Fences play a big role in the American West.  As vast as it is finding unfenced land is rare.  Often coils of wire are left behind for the next repair.  Here the coil, the barb wire fence and the shadow on the snow create an elegant winter design.  Did you know that barb wire comes in dozens if not hundreds of styles and patterns so distinctive that an expert can tell what ranch employs a given style? Just a little Americana from the old sage of the high desert.

Vanishing Point

Nothing in America matches the desperation of some of our Indian reservations and the hardscrabble communities that subsist on them.  The Pine Ridge Reservation straddles two achingly poor counties, one in South Dakota and one in Nebraska.  The per capita income of $4,524 is among the lowest in the United States.  Unemployment is over 80%.  It's no surprise that the reservation is a wellspring of drug addiction and alcoholism.  Brutally cold in the winter and blazing hot in summer, the earth is barely arable.  There are no mineral resources.  Home, sweet home, Leonard Peltier.

More about The Arrangement

In my earlier post I neglected to include a link to the catalog for the show.  If you click on the link below you'll be able to flip through the book to see all of the images in the exhibition.  Pretty cool.


www.viovio.com/shop/87631

The Arrangement

The tradition of the still life as an art subject is alive and well during The Arrangement, an exhibition at Vermont Photo Space in Essex Junction about 10 miles east of Burlington.  I am pleased to announce the inclusion of two of my photographs in the show that begins January 11 and runs through March 4.   

Juror Paula Tognorelli, Executive Director of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Massachusetts describes still life as art making that begins with arrangements of primarily inanimate objects.  And, in the words of gallery owner Ken Signorello photographic images of these still lifes are a sort of “art squared where one first creates a work of art then another to preserve it.”

Paula Tognorelli has selected “Found Art” and “Muffler Art #1” for the exhibition.  Click on the link below to learn more about the show.

www.vermontphotospace.com

 

Into the storm

We hadn't had much winter when a blast hit us Friday.  Half a dozen inches fell in town and 15" were welcomed on the mountain.  It was minus nine when I got the The Times this morning.  In this shot Highway 64 eastbound vanishes into a threatening sky.

Eroded Values

On a parched hillock between Encino and Vaughn sat an adobe ruin and a leafless tree punctuating an unforgiving plain; the tree's roots exposed by decades of torment.

No more breakfast

US Highway 285 enters New Mexico near Antonito, Colorado and heads south through Santa Fe where it bends to the southeast through barren plains and threadbare railroad towns before entering Texas south of Carlsbad.   The dusty and dying railroad towns, scarcely more than sidings really, called to me a couple of weeks back.  Encino and Vaughn wouldn’t exist if not for the BNSF Railroad and as it is are on life support.   At the edge of what’s left of Encino a school bus gazes forlornly into the sage and mesquite.   The school now abandoned.  The last café shuttered.  No more 99 cent breakfast.

Inky Shadows

I got several calls and emails from folks who were particularly enthusiastic about Long Shadow, last week's post.  So here's another Sketch of Winter replete with shadows.  This looks to me like an Aspen Rorschach test.

Long Shadow

And while we're thinking about shadows, here's Long Shadow from my evolving Sketches of Winter series.  In the series objects are depicted as line drawings on featureless white paper. 

Adobe and Smoke

The first nip of winter has arrived.  The ski valley is open and it was 12 degrees when I picked up the NY Times this morning.  Adobe and Smoke says winter without snow, sleighs or jingle bells.  Sometimes the reflection or shadow of a thing is better than the thing itself.

Focal point or foreground interest?

A common enhancement of a straight landscape is a foreground element that frames or gives depth to the image.  So it is here with a fallen tree leading into the dunes and mountains beyond.  Does the deadfall merely improve the landscape or is it the subject of the photograph? 

More Mark

From resolute to affable in six seconds.

Earth Through a Lens 2011

I'm pleased to let you know about an exciting photography competition called Earth Through a Lens.  This is a national juried exhibition focused on building a more sustainable environment.  I had the honor of being included in last year's exhibition in Palm Springs and encourage you to submit work dealing with the natural world or man's impact on it.  It's a great way to address nature and environmental concerns in an artful and expressive way. To learn more log on to www.earththroughalensPS.com

Steely Resolve

My good friend Mark Asmus is a fine oil painter who has achieved renown through his "Police Blotter" paintings which poke affectionate fun at the unlikely it couldn't happen anywhere else but Taos entries in the police blotter in our weekly paper.  Beyond that he's a handsome 6'6" drink of water that I've wanted to photography for awhile.  Here's but one of a host of keepers.

Battery Godfrey

We don't see a whole lot of fog here in the high desert so being cloaked in the stuff was magical.  The fog moved westward through the Golden Gate Bridge and out into the Pacific while a WW1 era gun emplacement protected San Francisco Bay from the ghosts of German warships.

You lookin' at me?

Llama's are scene stealers.  In this shot, an impertinent llama upstages the newlyweds as the Rio Grande Gorge and Sangre de Cristo mountains bear witness.

That's Amore

Although I was on the chase raft and clearly heard the song Cisco was singing I just can't remember the tune.  So I've decided he was singing a certain Dean Martin hit from the fifties.  "When the moon hits your eye like a bigga pizza pie, that's amore."

Men in hats

Cisco Guevara owns Los Rios River Runners which operates rafting trips down the Rio Grande, the Chama and others.  He's as well known for the hat he always wears as his escapades in wild white water of northern New Mexico. The question is this.  Does he have more than one of his famous hats or is that thing, um, ripe.

Under a big sky

This decaying old corral and cattle chute in the barrens of Tres Piedras seems the perfect icon to represent an unremitting desert of sage and tumbleweed where traces of man are few.

Hat in Hand

There's no rule that says a portrait has to include the face.  Sometimes the most revealing images are of hands as in this the last of the Lenny Foster trilogy.  With this photograph I'm riffing on a very Lenny like composition.  Lenny photographed like Lenny might have photographed Lenny.

Have I got hats?

As promised, more of fedora man.

Three Days of Lenny - Fedora Man

Lenny Foster is not only a great photographer but one hell of a model to boot.  I leaned on him for a portrait session a couple of days back and, boy, did he bring his A game.  The shoot was ostensibly to memorialize his being named Best of Show in the recent Taos Fall Arts festival.  Most convenient for me I think.

Autumn Abstractions

Just when you thought it was safe some loony tune messes with Mother Nature.  When you whip  your camera left to right or zoom in and out when the shutter's open strange things happen.

The Big Little Landscape

On this second of my blogs from Northside at Taos Ski Valley I feel I'm getting closer to the essence of fall in the New Mexico mountains.  I told Teruko, Lawrence and Kerrie, my charges on that gorgeous day, that the shots of leaves strewn like Lily pads on a small pond would be my best of the session or at least would be the ones I'd want to look at again and again.

Tomorrow I'll get all abstract on you.

Northside at Taos Ski Valley

Last Tuesday I led three photographers into the wilds of Northside at Taos Ski Valley.   This was a trial run for workshops I'll be teaching on Northside's 1,300 vertiginous acres.  As you can see by the top of the world vistas shown here we can top out at 12,200 feet and get there in style by 4-wheel drive shuttle, a pretty painless way to photograph the southern Rockies.  Contact me if you want to partake.  More to come.

Two Windows

I think these windows look like eyes in a flat adobe face.  Heck, the thing has eyebrows and a nose.  

Hurley's Barn

It hit 31 degrees yesterday morning in Taos and felt like fall for the first time.  When the breath of autumn fills my soul I think of New England where I spent half a lifetime.  And when I think of a quintessentially autumn in New England scene this is it.  It's George and Jean Hurley's Currier and Ives barn in the village of Wonalancet, New Hampshire.  It's not a color image yet says fall to me like rusts, red and yellows cannot.

Margy Dudley's Advice

A few years back I submitted a portfolio to Margy who's the owner of the wonderful Open Shutter Gallery in Durango.  She was, shall we say, underwhelmed.  But out of her lukewarm review came some of the best advice I've had.  It was, in short, to look beyond the obvious.  To look up, down, behind you and behind the subject in search of a unique view.  Here, in a shot much like the recent "Ten Penny," I looked straight down at a newly built deck.  The perfect lines and angles were sweet geometry.  This was shot with a Leica Point and Shoot with 8.4 megapixels of resolution.  Oh that Leica glass.  

Take a little off the top

When Daryl and I were trading photos a couple of weeks ago she did me the biggest favor.   She took off about fifteen years in one fell swoop.  The photo is reminiscent of one taken by my late buddy Chuck Fridenmaker during my folk singing days in the very early sixties. Eerily similar in a younger sort of way.

Ten Penny

The sharp lines of these boards could scarcely be more different from the soft focus Lucie in my last post.  The lumber lay on the ground near a newly built corral in New Mexico's Valle Vidal.  I looked down to see the simple geometry of the boards and the single nail as a punctuation point.

Going Softly

Hand holding at 1/13 second is nearly impossible.  But from these privations Lucie's doe eyed beauty emerges.  Blind luck prevails!

Bailey

And in this one Miss Bailey is doing her best I want to be seventeen impression. Thirteen year olds teeter between childhood and womanhood within seconds.  That's no revelation but really apparent when you photograph them.

Lucie

Lucie and best pal since two Bailey are thirteen.  Here she looks thirteen I'd say.

Bailey and Lucie

These two are a photographers dream.  They love the camera and it obviously loves them.  I was shooting headshots of Bailey and Lucie for an movie they'd like to be in.  Don't know the name of the film but they say Sean Penn stars.  There were lots of great frames.  This one  has some mood I think. Solo images to follow.

Daryl

I had the chance to photograph my friend and colleague Daryl Black last week.  Not only is she a wonderful photographer and writer but a high level Black Belt in Taekwondo and an accomplished Tango dancer with her husband Fred who's a pilot, architect and award winning weaver.  Daryl says she doesn't like the business end of the camera very much but I beg to differ.

Uli 3 and Out

This is the impish Uli who is in Munich ( I  think) and readying for his return to Saint Petersburg.  It's also the last post of the young lad for now.

Uli 2

Lost or confused?  I have no idea.  I do know that all the Uli shots were done with a Profoto Acute 2 head through a Chimera Medium Softbox.  And all were shot with a 70-200mm lens at f2.8.