Week 52 - Hail and Farewell 2016

Day 358

I thought I had incorrectly numbered the days but today I posted day 366 just as I should have, but this week has nine photos in it. So you get a bonus two. And I had an extra day to think about 2017.

Every year I have done this exercise I wonder if I will do it it again. As with all exercises it isn't as easy as it looks. And I admit to scrambling these last couple of weeks because my head was elsewhere. And I was depressed. It was my sister, former photography trek buddy now in Texas, who reminded me I needed to get out with my camera and take pictures and I would feel better.

Some people take Prosaic. I take pictures. And yesterday without a single photograph to post in the coming new year I went out with my Nikon D7100 and took pictures. The opening posts for 2017 will be awesome so please stay tuned. 

On a recent survey of the photos posted in this weekly blog for 2016 I decided it was a good year artistically for me. And in the next week I will be doing some best of blogs. And the best of this year was the new camera. Yes, I know, I say it is not about the camera but about the photographer. But even sketcher in the park needs a sharp pencil. Now I want a new lens.

And now a word from our sponsor. In this coming year I will be donating 10% of all art sales to the Sierra Club. I have to do what I can to protect my "models" which year after year have been there for me and all citizens of this country as well as visitors.

Day 359

I think my eye this last week was focused on the abstract or unseen. The things we often miss as we walk through our lives. These photographs are what I frequently dismiss while trying for just the right landscape framing or are right beside me as I photo edit on my computer. Yesterday I was back out in my element so tomorrow begins 365 Day Challenge 2017. Check out daily posts on Binford-Bell Studio on Facebook.

Day 360

Day 361

Day 362

Day 363

Day 364

Day 365

Day 366

Week 51 - 2016 in photographs

Day 351

This was a rough week for photography. I was too involved with the printing, framing, mounting aspects of the art form. I had selected seven photographs to have printed so I could refresh my display at Enchanted Circle Brewing in Angel Fire. In this day of dwindling galleries for art and photography it is wise to stay on top of things. 

I paint and photograph. The advantage of photography over painting is the image remains in my computer until someone wants a print or I have an opportunity to display. But the disadvantage is, unlike painting when given an opportunity to show the work needs to just be taken from the studio walls, with photography there are tons of decisions to be made as to size and platform, supplies to be ordered, and then matting and framing or if printed on canvas stretched on bars. 

I had also just been given a venue in Taos to show a few of my paintings. Taking the camera out for a spin in the neighborhood was hardly on the top of my to-do list. To fill the week even the studio cat was included. And thankfully it snowed.

But had I taken photo 351 a couple days earlier it would have been included in those I printed on canvas. It will be in the next group if just for me. I paintings are hung at Earlene's Cafe. And today I will hang the last two photographs on canvas at the brewery. Ran into a stretcher bar issue. 

It truly isn't all about pretty pictures.

Day 356

Day 355

Day 354

Day 352

Day 353

Day 357
Thicke - the boss

Week 50 - 2016 in photographs

Day 344

All horizontal or landscape format if you will. And appropriate because this week was all landscapes. And week 51 begins with landscapes too. I sadly have not been out taking photos for the last few days. I was inside the studio making a huge mess framing and stretching photos for display.

I also hung paintings at a restaurant in Taos and hopefully today will hang the newly printed photographs at Enchanted Circle Brewing in Angel Fire. The camera gets brought along on these events just to record the work which is hung. At one time that was all my camera was for - as a support for my painting activities. Now sales of photography fills in the lean times between sales of paintings. And it is still a wonderful research tool for skies and horizon lines and lighting.

Day 345

Day 346

Day 347

Day 348

Day 349

In my daily posts the elk are always a favorite. And a definitely learning curve for me. And them. This herd seemed to know me. They did not immediately take to the tree line. Just another benefit of going back to the same spots again and again.

I am always thrilled capturing some of the area wildlife but of late my great joy has been black and whites. Never thought I would say that. In my recent print order there were three black and whites to four color photographs. And I really love aspens without leaves.

Day 350

Week 49 - 2016 in Photographs

Day 337

Winter has made a tentative toe into our weather. Just enough to change the landscape and now and then drive me into the warmth of a greenhouse.

And life has been very busy. So busy that the day the starter failed on the pickup I see as a gift. I fortunately had my camera and a very interesting place to hang around for four hours waiting for the tow truck. Which brings up my approach to photography: I take treks or drives. But staying in one place for that long with no internet or chores to do is a better approach if the photos I uploaded when I finally got home is any indication.

Day 338

Day 339

Day 340

 And having to wait on call from mechanic when I got home allowed me to fully explore the new photos. Which I seriously needed to do since I had an appointment with my printer to get some photos printed. Day 341 was one of my choices to enlarge and print.

Day 341

And I am considering 342 to enter in an approaching photographic exhibit.

Day 342

And day 343 is one of my favorite selfies. With spare time I become self indulgent.

Day 343

Week 48 - A Week in Black and White/2016 in Photographs

Day 330

 Yesterday while waiting for a tow truck I took photographs to pass the time. I, as fate would have it, was without a moving vehicle in close to paradise. But I was stopping there for just a quick errand and truly was not dressed adequately to spend an hour or two outside with my camera.

Luck was with me, however, and I had put the emergency box in the bed of the pickup just the day before. Inside were winter snow boots and ski gloves and a Nature's Valley energy bar.

When I finally made it home I had 101 photographs to upload and post process. Some will be on next week's blog and the week after. But most of my 366 Days of Photographs posts don't go that way. In fact it has been a bleak few weeks for any creative enterprise. This week represented here was a day by day affair, and so the days out out of sequence because that was the way they were in the photo and I opted to leave them that way.

But what is really interesting about this week is they are all in black and white. And actually it began the end of the previous week. Yes, the world seems a bit without color this time of year in the mountains, but three of these were very vividly colored flowers originally. The last orchids were white but the pot and wall had color.

Day 334

Day 331

Day 332

Day 333

Day 335

Day 336

Week 47 - 2016 in Photographs

Day 323

All my photographs this week are horizontal. I personally find that interesting as I am more of a vertical photographer maybe due to the forests I live in and the canyons I visit. And when I turn my camera for a vertical framing of a scene I turn it to the right. I worked with a photographer on a small local paper who always turned her camera to the left. You?

Day 324

Of course sunsets, above, and sunrises, below, are almost always horizontal but I have taken some vertical ones. 

Day 325

The moon shot below is horizontal because it is at sunset. Generally my snaps of the moon are vertical. It took me a few years to discover I do my best moon shot when they are approaching full. That is partly due to the fact that they rise earlier and there is more available light. Since all photo editing software now come with a moon which can be layered into any photograph I do not go out of my way to take pictures of the moon. But I will stop whatever I am doing to take a picture of dawn or sunset.

Day 326

Day 327

The first photograph and Day 327 are of the same little pond. Because of its small size and high banks I don't take a lot of photographs I like here, but I keep trying. This fall a couple worked.

Day 328

Next week all the photographs will be black and white. Like horizontal it just may be a mood I am in. Photo Day 328 is black and white but Day 329 isn't. It is merely reduced saturation. See the hint of gold in the grass?

I am very fond of this last photograph. And response from those who viewed it on my Binford-Bell Studio page were positive. I am considering four photographs to enlarge and print to hang at Enchanted Circle Brewing in Angel Fire. My photography decorates their walls.

Day 329

The Edge Series

On the Edge
30 x 18 Mixed Media on Artists Canvas
$1350

 On the Edge above is my first painting about the starkness of life. To some degree they are inspired by the canyons of the Colorado Plateau which I paint frequently. But more they were hatched, if you will, from my experience in October 2011 visiting the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Parks.

Some inspiration takes longer to peculate through the subconscious than others. And this series came by way of a visit to the Clayton-Raton Volcanic Field.  That visit resulted in the Fat Grass series of paintings and a departure into green in my palate. But it had the same emptiness and loneliness of the Painted Deserts of the Southwest. And because of volcanic births the same energy.

I took the emptiness I found on the volcanic field of Clayton and Raton and carried it back to the haunting memories of my visit to the canyons of Arizona and came up with On the Edge. Painting number two of the series was Over the edge. And the newest is End of Days which I just finished. This series is my most abstract.

Water or the lack of water still figures as a subtext in these landscapes. The flock of crows is down to a solitary raven somewhere in the sky.

Having just finished The End of Days I find myself already sketching out in my mind the next in this series.

End of Days
16 x 30 Watercolor on Artists Canvas
$1200

Over the Edge
18 x 24 Mixed Media on Artists Canvas
$975

Purple Sage
19 x 36 Mixed Media on Artists Canvas
$1600

Week 46 - 2016 in Photographs

Day 316

 Beginning the posting of daily photographs for week 47 on Binford-Bell Studio, and noticed I had an empty folder. Not that I have not been taking photographs but they have been of deck improvements and painting progress. Just finished my newest End of Days which is part of my edge series. 

Photography is also taking a bend toward illusion. Snow has been delayed in our mountain community surrounding a ski area. We have gone from the stark horror of the election to the grim possibility of a winter without snow. NOAA predicts 50% warmer and 40% drier than normal. So photographs of beautiful snow you do not have to shovel will be more rare. More photographs of pond reflections and bare aspens against the sky.

Given the warmer forecast I will probably spend more days stalking the singular image.

Day 317

Day 318

Day 319

Day 320

Day 321

Day 322