Week 23 - 2015 in Photographs

Day 155

Mostly a landscape week. But I had a couple pictures from the Aztec mill in Cimarron, New Mexico I had not processed yet. It is not all about finding the time to take the photographs. But like in the film days there is darkroom time to factor in. Now we call it dry darkroom. And when time is short I have the tendency to rate my photos and then do the best, or those which I think are best, and save the rest for when I have the time. It is summer and between art community activities and gardening there does not seem to be adequate time.

Day 156

And summer is when I like to take my spare time driving around with my camera. The rains have made the plains green and the wild flowers bloom. But June is that month in the high country when we seem to be balanced between the remains of winter and the hints of summer.

Day 157

We are currently already building up for an early monsoonal season. It is one of my favorite times in New Mexico because the clouds are so varied and changeable. Believe it or not when you a a photographer cloudless blue skies get boring.

Day 158

And noisy skies make the best black and white photographs. I am a lover of color as anyone who is familiar with my paintings knows. I came late to black and white in digital photography. Of course when I was studying fine arts at the University of New Mexico all we got to shoot in photography was black and white. And Ansel Adams made New Mexico famous with his black and white photographs.

But the subtle colors in the mountain scene below are also a favorite. Once out of school and with color film I used to seek out the monochromatic or close to monochromatic landscapes. I loved the Blue Ridge mountains because they are blue. Distance does that. The mountains in the photograph below are between 30 and 50 miles away in Colorado.

Day 159

On the same day I took the majority of this week's photos I visited the Dawson Cemetery. I particularly loved this cast wrought Iron cross painted silver. It and the white painted iron crosses behind if marking the graves of the victims of the Dawson Mine collapses made a perfect black and white composition. There is an almost other world silence about the Dawson Cemetery.

Day 160

The morning with the heavy moisture from the wet spring shrouded the Palisade Cliffs. It was the one element always missing in previous attempts to record this geologic landmark. They are awesome but look flat in the New Mexico sun. The fog game them distance and size.

Day 161

I have taken several of the photographs I took of the cliffs and transformed them to black and white. But I loved the shades of green in the photograph from the deep blue green of the firs to the bright new spring green of the cottonwoods and the yellow green of a low bush in the foreground. The pink and peach of the cliffs is a perfect offset to the greens.