Week 21 - 2018 in Photographs

Day 140
Sharing the sofa

 Eclectic week with the camera: Three animal photos, two clouds, two flowers. Only one black and white. Enjoy the color.

Day 141
Stack of clouds

Day 142
Nasturtiums 

Day 143
Canadian Geese which now breed in New Mexico

Day 144
My large yellow orchid

Day 145
Cattle on the rise

Day 146
Clouds not stacked

Week 20 - 2018 in Photographs

Day 133

 I am going to do this week a bit different than most. I am going to post both the color and black and white versions of some of the photos. Some will have already been posted last week but I want you to be able to see them together here. I often have problems of which to decide to feature in a blog or on my studio page. As a painter I love color. But as a photographer I am daily more drawn to black and white.

Day 130

Day 134

Day 135

Day 132

The Volkswagen photos were all taken on the same day naturally. But this last week I also went on a trek through the canyon to Ocate. The following pictures, two with their black and white versions, were taken on that adventure.

Day 136

Day 136 in Black and White

Day 137

Day 137 in Black and White

Day 138

Day 138 is an end of roll photograph to be honest. In the film days you could often get 37 or 38 photos on a roll of 36. And when you still had not come to the end of a roll I sometimes snapped one or two quick photos so I could complete the roll and take it for processing. Sometimes it was a good photo and sometimes it wasn't. 

Photographic treks were once limited by the rolls of film you had with you. Then in the early digital days by the size of your memory card(s). The latter keep getting bigger and bigger. Trips to places with few sources for supplies have taught me to carry extra cards along (I had one fail on me). And my current camera even holds two scan discs.  

Sometimes my biggest limitation is my own focus. Taking photographs can be mentally and physically intensive. After taking photo 138 I was ready to get to La Cuerva and the nursery to buy plants for my garden. But then there was this Pronghorn posing for me.

Day 139

Week 19 - 2018 in Photographs

Day 126

This week was devoted to black and white explorations. Black and white shows the basic bones of a photograph. Ansel Adams was the king of recording the southwest without color. But no color does not mean less. It can mean more. Next week I will be posting both the color and black & white versions of some photographs.

For me this week was an exercise; a chance to hone my skills in a week where color is not a major distraction. 

Day 127

Day 128

Day 129

Day 130

Day 131

Day 132

Week 18 - 2018 in Photographs

Day 119

In spite of this lead landscape this week was mostly horticulture. That is what happens when you are left in charge of a greenhouse while spring swings back and forth between snow and winds. The snow did give me this great image of the town of Eagle Nest being highlighted by a bit of sun showing through the clouds.

Day 120

Days 120 and 121 are the same photograph but with different treatments. College, my father always said, was not about getting an education but teaching you how to educate yourself. And in the last couple weeks I have discovered that the 365 day photographic challenges I have been doing for several years now are about educating myself as a photographer. So the journey formally begun in Photography 101 continues. And weekly I give myself little exercises. This week it was largely in front of the computer working on processing possibilities. B&W or color?

Day 121

Also crop. The joy of a mega pixel camera is even when cropped there are plenty of pixels to play with. And sometimes you cannot get as close to the subject as you want even with a long lens. A couple years back an article I read said it was unnecessary to include the tops or bottoms of a tree in a photograph. I have achieved some delicious results playing with that and have even deleted both tops and bottoms of aspens. 

The question is how much of a rose needs to be in the photograph to know it is a rose. Surprisingly little. I have included the original photo and two alternative crops. 

The Original photo

Day 122

The extreme crop

Of course an exercise never is just one homework assignment. I give you the example of the purple shamrock. 

Day 123

With the shamrock I wanted to delete all the green. Just for the fun of it. The resulting crop below achieves that and also asks the question, yet again, how much of a photograph has to be in focus. Very little.

Day 124

And day 125. Is just a photograph of one of my orchids in the morning light coming through the studio windows. I cropped to minimize the background distractions and then did a dark vignette to highlight the colors of the flowers. The first photograph of this blog and the last is all about that spot of light through the clouds or the window. But then photography is all about the light.

Day 125

This week I am working on black and white. So next week's blog will be all without color.