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.