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.

Uli

Yesterday I was shooting a basic passport photo for my new friend Ulrich Gleiter, an incredibly talented young painter from Munich by way of the Repin Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg.  As I'm writing this today Uli is boarding his flight to Toronto or Montreal and then to Munich where he'll be desperate for sleep and a decent meal.  This shot is pretty much unmessed with.  And the next post or two will be a tad more adventurous.  You can google him.