After Thoughts

Blanket of Snow

As I stare down the rifle barrel of 82 years, I’m moved to take stock, to reevaluate and ponder my priorities in late middle age. It’s not that I’m dissatisfied. It’s that I’m not satisfied. That may be a distinction without a difference. But I know the difference. I plod ahead with the minor tasks which take so much time I don’t attempt the challenging difference makers like the book that’s become a punchline or the great adventures of my dreams. I told a friend recently that I live in my head instead of doing something of import or devoting the time to actually learn something.

This splash of blue is prompted by a handful of things not the least of which were my sales at Peggy’s and my Side by Side art opening Saturday night where I sold precisely one photograph. And it was a holdover from our two person show in 2021. I sold nary a one of my new images despite presenting what I thought was my strongest body of work so far. It was definitely a what’s the point? moment.

Steve and the proud owner of Blanket of Snow

 Steve, Jody and Peggy, the star of the show. 

A feel-good moment was a lovely woman who drove 12 hours from Dallas just to see the show and to buy Blanket of Snow which she’d seen earlier at the gallery. She agonized over the purchase and went to the bar around the corner to contemplate the purchase. She really struggled with the decision. Perhaps it was the price. She had a glass of wine and shared her quandary with the bartender who told her, “See this glass of wine? You won’t remember it tomorrow, but you’ll always have the photograph if you buy it.” She came back to the gallery as it was ready to close and bought the photograph. The image was wrapped, and Peggy and I drove Jody and the picture back to her hotel. To see that the photograph was so important to her and that she’d gone to the trouble and expense of the journey was touching.

Another gift was the friends that showed up to support us. I heard from several of them that it was the strongest body of work they’d ever seen from me. Some of them were excellent photographers so that was most rewarding. And among the supportive friends most own at least one of my images, and I there's.

Chief among those supportive friends were Nancy Silvia and Hiroshi Murata who asked if we’d like have dinner after the show. We agreed instantly. We love Nancy and Hiroshi. We picked the most expensive restaurant in Taos expecting to pick up the tab. But Hiroshi grabbed the check and would not be dissuaded despite my protestations. He said, “We’re paying because we're celebrating your excellent show.” And that was that. We insisted that when we visit Santa Fe next time we’re paying. At least we'll try.

Then there was the shock of the decline in friends I hadn’t seen in three years due to Covid. God, it was shocking. One had lost dozens of pounds and looked unwell. Another looked beautiful but was using a cane because of an injured hip. And the third with rheumatoid arthritis could no longer shake hands. His right hand was a claw. 

Sudden decline in your peers will get your attention fast. It tells you to take care of yourself and do what you want to do while you still can. You've heard that admonition from me about a thousand times, maybe more. My back’s a mess and I’m two inches shorter but I can still do almost everything I used to do. What’s a little discomfort?

Refer to “to take stock, to reevaluate, and ponder my priorities” up top. 

Start to Finish Again

Nearing the junction the Rio Pueblo and Rio Grande an epic cloud appeared on a frigid January morning.

There's more drama to the toned black and white Alpha Cloud in this version according to me. Of course I am a black and white kind of guy. Mostly.

 

At day's end we hiked to the height of land in blissful Bargeme France where we encountered the ruins of a medieval castle.

It is called Sabron du Ponteves.

One shady afternoon in San Miguel I made half a dozen photographs of a facsimile of one of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders.

A bit more pop in this iteration of the Rough Rider.

Continuing our examination of the wonders of spot color these are three more exemplars of the dark art. Immel + Immel Side by Side will open Saturday evening at Wilder Nightingale in Taos between 5 and 7 pm and we look forward to seeing you there. As was the case last week you’ll see the original unprocessed image side by side with the artfully altered finished photograph. It seemed clear to me last week that the finished image called Pozos Gold is a significantly better than the original file. That was my perception at until my dear friend the wonderful photographer Daryl Black told me she was torn between the drab, unfrittered with Pozos Gold and the glowing Pozos Gold of my dreams. To me the transformation was startling in a good way.

I told her “It goes to show that preferences in art are in the eye and heart of the of the beholder. It’s completely subjective.”

I wonder what Daryl will think about these three twosomes.

Here's hoping this post arrives Monday morning instead of Wednesday afternoon.

Start to Finish. A day late and a dollar short

As shot in the charming Mexican village Mineral de Pozos.

It became Pozos Gold.

When Peggy and I started to develop a theme for our September show at Wilder Nightingale we chose the title Side by Side. As detailed in previous posts the name refers to our long coupledom and to our artistic partnership. Beyond that I’m always looking for a new wrinkle. Two years ago the wrinkle was squares. Everything was in a square format. That was a first for me, for sure, and rare for Peggy. And further I featured spot color and used white frames, also firsts. The trifecta worked biggish time and I’ve been riding the spot color horse ever since. Then this year I proposed that Peggy display her original field study or preliminary sketch next to some of her finished paintings. And I, in turn, would display the original unprocessed file next to the finished photograph in some if not all of my work. That was this year’s wrinkle.

While photographing with photography master David Michael Kennedy last year this happened.

Now it's Windows to the Sky.

It's fine in color but....

But better when the Turn Signal dominates.

On Thursday I awoke to the reality of that premise. I’d have to find the original file. I worried first and mostly that I wouldn’t be able to find all the originals and, second, that the untouched file right out of the camera would be better the one that I massaged to death. I didn’t agonize over that prospect, but it concerned me a little.

I am happy to report that I was able to locate and print the original file of all the images. And I’m pleased with the journey the photograph made from gestation to adulthood.

Today you’ll see some of the before and afters. Maybe next week, too. I must acknowledge that all of these images began as rectangles. Only two landscapes in the show are horizontals. They were way stronger in their full frame glory.  

I didn’t crop for 60 years and have been entirely too boastful about composing in the view finder and printing full frame. Now I’m cropping like a man possessed. How far I’ve fallen.

If you've read this far you deserve to know that my mail burner, the enterprise that sends the email announcing the latest post, failed due to an expired credit card which I've tried to update for three weeks and counting. The issue, it seems, is with the mailburner's payment processor which wouldn't accept any cards though they're valid. Today I attempted a work-around using PayPal which accepted the card instantly. PayPal and its payment processor have sent receipts for my payment and my hope it that you'll get this post on the morrow or sooner.

Good luck to us all.

The camera in my pocket, Part Two

The shadow of the tree across the street drapes over a sprawling adobe on Hinde Street in downtown Taos.

Continuing our journey through the forest of iphone images that have supplanted full frame photographs are these examples. Not to fret. I have three SD cards at the 10:00 o’clock position in my field of vision just waiting to be processed. So, the real photo dry spell referenced last week will have ended for the time being.

This is the gate to the historic Couse House on Kit  Carson Road in Taos.

Pioneer Title at nightfall after the quite incredible Robert Plant and Allisson Kraus concert in Kit Carson Park. Peggy was there for Plant's leather pants while I attended for the music.

The stoplights at the corner of Paseo de Pueblo Sur and Cañon Road in Taos.

Hay bales and the obligatory Taos Clouds as seen at Casa Immel.

One card is of photographs I took at the recent opening of photographer Bill Davis’s show at the Barreis Gallery in El Prado, NM. The second is of the recently hayed Immel rancho. And the third is from a portrait session with my dear friend Lindsey Enderby and his companion and caregiver Pam Morgan. That one, I hope, will be worth the wait since Lindsey and Pam requested the session and formal portrait thingies are nervous making. The photographer, moi, feels considerable pressure to produce photographs make them happy; namely that they look better than they actually do. I know that’s what I want when I’m photographed. This portrait ordeal, I mean session, proved to be a test. I’m usually adept at getting subjects to relax and to give me a beaming smile. For the most part Lindsey wasn’t having that smile nonsense.

When I described the session and the lackluster results Peggy asked if I remembered the portraits I took of our elderly Minnesota neighbors Helen and Tom in 1972. I said that I did. She reminded me, “Those portraits were pretty severe. Tom and Helen didn’t smile at all but the portraits were really handsome.” I can only hope that history will repeat itself more than fifty years later. And handsome is better than happy anyway. Or is it the other way around?

But for now, you’re saddled with a handful of smart phone pics from the camera that resides next to the car keys in the right front pocket of my jeans.

I do wish I could find Helen and Tom’s portrait, the one made with a Kodak 2D 8”x10” view camera built in 1941. That’s when I was born, too.  I’m still here and I still have that handsome 82 year old camera.          

Is that a camera in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

La Favorita Dance Hall, Ranchos de Taos, NM.

Sad to say I haven’t photographed much with a real camera this year. But for my four-night road trip to Lakes Powell and Mead in June it’s been a dry patch. My attention has been focused on what I’ve already done and what I need to do to get ready for an upcoming show, a submission to a show with an August 16 deadline and a magazine article due at the end of month. Please refer to Lakes Powell and Mead, the subjects of said article with the operating title of High and Dry.

Nightfall on La Loma Plaza, Taos, NM.

Master of All I Survey, a shadowy figure photographs his front pasture. Casa Immel or Ranchito Sin Vacas. Your choice.

A very abstract Umbrellas at Orlando's while lunching with my painter friend Damien Gonzales.

Even more abstract is Swirl, the crescent glow of a solar powered light at the entrance to Casa Immel.

So, to a too much too large extent my go-to device has been the at the ready iphone in my pocket. Or in my left hand if I’m running. That’s been five early mornings a week during this two-month run of 90-degree days. There was a time when I would have braved the 90s but the one time I tried that this summer I barely made it up the final hill to the hospital. Literally. That’s where I park for my favorite one hour out and back route. And you never know when an emergency room will come in handy.

Tuesday I was running on a different out and back route out NM 518 in Ranchos Taos. So, I passed Paul’s Bar twice. On the return leg I stopped for all of two minutes to photograph the long-closed dive bar. It has been closed for the twenty years we’ve lived in Taos. An Instagram follower commented that it’s been closed since she arrived on our shores 32 years ago. But photographer Geraint Smith, from Wales by way of Pasadena, commented that he and his comrades used to stock up on beer on Saturday nights at Paul’s in 1988 when Taos County was dry on the Sabbath. I know that I’m highly annoyed I didn’t have a chance to quaff a cold one at Paul’s. I do love dive bars.

But I prattle on. Turns out that the spiffy little number above which I call La Favorita Dance Hall was the most liked image I’ve ever posted to Instagram. And that’s after 1,200 something posts. So, by that metric, the “best” photograph I’ve posted was one from a smart phone while I was doing something quite unrelated to photography. It just seems wrong. 

That said, all of these pics are from the camera in my pocket. Are you happy?

Curating Three

Here is the final tranche of candidate images for Immel + Immel Side by Side, Peggy’s and my show that opens September 2 at Wilder Nightingale Fine Art in Taos. And like last week, the captions are the stories. Tell me what you really think.

Barely half a mile from Casa Immel is the historic Martinez Hacienda, the northern most Grand Hacienda in New Mexico which dates to 1803. On the this chilly morning all of the canales were resplendent with icicles dripping slowly against the January sky. It's Canales y Hielo, literally channels and ice.

I call this slender number Simplicity, simply because it is. This is a window on the north facing wall of Martinez Hall in Ranchos de Taos that 's across the street from historic Ranchos Church.

You'll recall this distinctive number from a post a few weeks back that included a batch of images that I submitted to Shadow and Light magazine's annual Color it Red issue. This one dubbed He and His Shadow and five others earned a mini-portfolio. My dear friend and wonderful photographer, Daryl Black, won a well-deserved full ten image spread. Her images were extraordinary.

And speaking of Ranchos Church, here's the iconic place of worship at last light. We'll call it Ranchos Glow.

Into the Clouds Two. This memorable shot was taken on one of the most memorable mornings of my long photographic life. As we ascended a shallow hill I pulled to the side of the road, got out of the car and photographed the tarmac as it appeared to enter the cloud. We were heading west toward the junction of the Rio Grande and the Rio Pueblo at a place called Taos Junction.

That's all folks.

 

Curating Two

I was driving the Enchanted Circle with the extraordinary photographer David Michael Kennedy last year. He was on a reconnaissance trip to prepare for an upcoming photo tour with frequent clients. We drove to the height of land in the village of Lama where I knew of a stash of abandoned homesteads that might appeal. This window framed the sky beyond so I called it just that, Sky Beyond.

More than 20 years ago I was exploring the sleepy downtown of Bartlett, NH. What had been the general store in the the hamlet was long shuttered and would soon be leveled in the name of progress. That factoid speaks to the need to photograph that withering thing you've passed a hundred times before it goes the way of the Bartlett store. It wasn't until I was processing the file that I saw that the photograph was really about the sky, the Reflected Sky.

Perhaps fifteen years ago I was shooting the cover photograph for the Taos Art School's catalog. The owner had arranged for the truck's owner to park his pristine 1939 International pick-up truck in front of Ranchos Church. You can see it's famous adobe buttresses beyond. It's called Iggy Peralta's Pick-up.

At the bottom of our street in San Miguel de Allende was a street light and a tangle of wires. It, as always, began as a color image but leant itself to the spot color treatment we know and love. It is Night Light.

Rusting away in the abandoned mining camp, Elizabeth Town, NM, was a convertible that some artistic soul had decorated with plastic flowers as if it were a grave. I call it Adornment. 

Continuing our ruthless culling of the brace of possibles for Immel + Immel Side by Side in , here are five more victims for your critiques and comments. Other than captions that describe the place, time, and circumstances of their capture, that’s photo speak for taking the picture, these candidates will speak for themselves. That opinions are personal and that no two eyes see things the same way was illustrated last week when some people choose Pozos Gold as the best of the five image batch while others didn’t think it stood up to the other the other four contenders. For what it's worth it was my favorite of that grouping.

Curating

Turn Signal, El Prado, NM.

Alpha Cloud, Ranchos de Taos, NM.

In a short seven weeks Peggy and I will have our fourth biannual show at Wilder Nightingale Fine Art in Taos. Mounting a show as successful as 2021’s boffo event is a dizzying prospect. But that’s the goal. For me the mission is choosing from existing images, hence the title of today’s blog Curating.  And I hope to add new selections, too. Peggy has the more daunting task called painting to a deadline. This is not a novel experience for her.

Upper Oro Mine #3, Leadville, CO.

White Cross. Dark Sky. La Morada de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Taos, NM.

We’re calling the show Immel +Immel, as always, with the subtitle Side by Side. That subtitle recognizes our 56 years as a married couple and that we’re exhibiting our work Side by Side once again. I will continue my exploration of Spot Color alongside the traditional midcentury black and white I’ve been devoted to for more than sixty years. Peggy will display her richly rendered oil paintings of New Mexico and the Southwest. While we work in different mediums our strengths in composition and craft lend cohesion to our work.

Pozos Gold, Mineral de Pozos, Mexico.

For at least two weeks and likely longer I’ll be posting my candidates for our September 2 show which will close September 28. I figure we’ll each offer 15-20 pieces as we did in 2021. Here are the first five possibles.

Tell me what you think.

Music to my eyes

The crowd of 6,000 begins to assemble for the quite incredible Robert Plan and Allison Krauss at Kit Carson Park. Last year it was Sting. Even world famous musicians want to play in tiny Taos. I just read that Plant is worth $200 million and still rocks his brains out.

 

In a more intimate setting 14 players gather every Wednesday on the patio of the Taos Café for a blue grass jamboree. In winter they jam at the Taos Ale House.

Actor and singer Chris Brochu and an unnamed local sideman play a bluesy set at the first ever Taos Roundup. If you look closely you'll see the the musician on your right is the same hefty guy with his back to you in the image above this one.

Taos is known as an art town, an art colony for that matter. The legend of Taos began with a broken wagon wheel north of town in 1898, took flight with the Taos Society of Artists in the early 20^th Century and has lured a who’s who of American and European artists for more than a hundred years.

Hats and hair at the Taos Roundup. Portland has nothing on us. We've got hipsters, too.

I'm guessing five years old.

It was an all ages affair. The falling sun made this striking lass glow.

And speaking of hats, hair and hipsters, that dude was muy photogenic. 

But Taos is an artist’s town in a broader sense. It has a literary scene, a chamber music group, some mighty fine bebop, a whole lot of Americana, a picante spike of Norteño, and a potent dose of Rock and Roll. Oh, and an opera society, an opera school and SOMOS, The Society of the Muse, with its annual Writer’s Conference. Not too shabby for a remote town of 6,000 in sprawling county of 35,000 oddballs that occupies 2,203 square miles of high desert and mountains. There aren’t many of us, but we punch above our weight.

What started as a post about the music by local musicians and major players like Robert Plant and Allison Krause has tilted toward the audiences. The last four shots occupy a subset of street photography it seems to me. 

I contend that you can hear live music every night of the week in Taos. To quote Bill Maher, "I don't know if it's true. I just know that I'm right."

Color it Red 2023

The photograph from San Miguel de Allende was once called Rough Rider for reasons you can readily discern. It became He and His Shadow when I applied the vaunted spot color technique which has brought me such wealth and fame.

This table top and stool after the rain is dubbed Chance of Showers. The image is also a victim of the dastardly spot color treatment. They lived in Telluride, Colorado and the red seat was once turquoise. Turquoise seemed a poor fit for Color it Red but I liked the design so this happened. 

As you’ve been told too many times I have a byline in the online photography magazine, Shadow and Light. It’s a bi-monthly publication that I've contributed to for five years and counting. Among the six issues editor and publisher Tim Anderson publishes two special issues meaning that my series Telling Stories appears four times a year. As a kind of game and to demonstrate gamut I've started submitting to the special juried issues like an ordinary Shmoo. If you know Shmoo, Li'l Abner, you're as old as I am. 

The special issues are Language of the Land and Color It Red. I secured a third-tier placement in the last Language of the Land and was proud to make the cut. The other work was stunning and honorable mention was about right. I just submitted to Color It Red 2023 which will publish on July 15. All digits crossed.

Roussillon, France was the ochre capitol of the world till that industry like tanning moved to North Africa. This crude weaving was dyed with ochre pigments from the cliffs that abut the village. I've called it Roussillon Rouge.

Candy Apple Red is Iggy Peralta's 1939 International pick-up in Ranchos de Taos, NM. It's still  Iggy's daily driver. 

Emblematic dwells in El Prado, NM. It's a portrait of lustrous reds and golds.

As to Shadow and Light, I encourage you to take a close look. It’s handsome journal that I’m proud to be part of. You can acquire six annual online issues for a princely ten bucks. You won't see a year of better photography than in Shadow and Light. 

https://shadowandlightmagazine.com/ Simply highlight and right click the link to go to the website.