Clouds of 2018

Clouds in Shades of Grey

If the monsoon clouds are not colorful then they look best in black and white. It always rather amazes the number of shades of grey in the clouds.

Black Lake Dawn

I bought my house because of the dawns. My windows don't face the setting sun but the east. Dawns do some marvelous things.

Storm Building over Ute Valley

It was a spring with fires all around us. Not always easy to tell which clouds were effected by a fire on the other side of the mountain and which weren't. The Ute Valley clouds above were just clouds I think. But the pink clouds below were at least colored by the Ute Park Fire.

Angel's Fire

And a fire to the west of my house seemed to give the clouds silver linings.

Partly Cloudy

But the last photo is at the least clouds generation by the Ute Park Fire and color intensified by the setting sun.

Clouds and Smoke and Sunset

Week Seven - 2018 in Photographs

Day 43

 Not dawn but the reflection of the setting sun on clouds to the east.  A variation of always look behind you in photography. The sunset was not that spectacular. 

Day 44

 I usually do not include pet photographs in my weekly roll of pictures but Thicke is one of my favorite subjects and sometimes he just rocks the role. On this day the sun cooperated with his pose.

Day 45

 Orchids are another favorite subject. They are such a great flower. But this photo also heralds a milestone for me. Not only can I make my orchids live beyond the blooms I bought them for but I have assisted them in blooming again. There are 23 buds on this flower spike. This is just bloom one. Stay tuned for the day the whole spray is in flower.

Day 46

I consider myself a landscape photographer but I also enjoy doing architectural and interior photographs. Day 46 is also a photograph of a reflection. I photo edited it to accent the interior which is the focus of the picture.

Day 47

I slipped a photograph of a texture in. But my favorite photo of the week was of this slice of moon in a predawn sky.

Day 48

Day 49

And the sundog in the snow was memorable.

Week One - 2018 in Photographs

Day one

The New Year is all about color. Snow finally arrived in a limited amount this morning but the first week of 2018 it looked more like fall than winter.

Day Two

But we finally got some freezing nights and in combination with the days it resulted in some wild ice patterns on small local ponds. And you cannot fault the dawns.

Day Three

But when dawn fails me for color I have gone to the greenhouse for inspiration.

Day Four

Day Five

And even a sunset. My studio faces toward the east and I have to actually go outside to catch a sunset. Below is the faithful Sentinel tree with the setting sun to the right and out of the photo casting color on the clouds behind the trees.

Day Six

And one of my new year intentions is to communicate more via paper. I bought some blank kraft paper note cards to paint or draw on. And even paste a photograph on. So I find myself looking to capture some still life images which would be great in this role. The cards will be signed and sent in response to those who write me via snail mail. I have this pile of communications I need to catch up on. Writing by way of pen and paper seems to be coming back. Maybe I should buy a fountain pen.

Day Seven

The Stand Alones of 2014

Pastel Sky

Assembling paintings for my solo showing in Trinidad, Colorado this last July I had to step back and judge my own work on a new level - inclusiveness. The exhibit was about more than 45 paintings. It was about 45 paintings which belonged together.

With the 365 Day Photographic Challenge it is about picking one photo which merits being the best for that one day. And then in this process of doing a recap on the best of those 365 it was about putting seven or eight photographs together on a blog. Photographs which belonged together because of subject or as an example of getting lucky. The photographs in this blog are examples of the art I would have left behind when doing the solo show this summer. Great photos but they just do not belong with the others.

Pastel Sky is a great dawn photo but it is pastel. It stands out among all my other dawn pictures because it is a different color. The photograph below is a more "normal" dawn at my house. But when I first posted it a photography friend told me I should not over saturate. Made it look fake. I didn't play with the colors on either of these two photographs. If you hung them together on a wall everyone would assume one was a post processing lie. The exhibit would be about that and not the other work.

Red Sky at Dawn

With a large segment of my photographs I just adjust for brightness and shadow. Maybe tweak the contrast a bit. But I also really like going all out on post processing. Painting with digital filters and effects. Like the bowl of fruit in the sun below. The photograph was taken from the interior of the room and back toward the direct light streaming through the windows. What my first photography instructor (and maybe every one since) told me not to do.

Not having to pay for every shot in cost of film and processing frees up the creative side. When I got my first digital camera it took me a long time to get over the "worshiping the shot" mentality. I loved the light and colors on these orbs, and the original is not bad but by playing with enhancement of colors and highlights the tomatoes began to look like glass so I used an enamel filter. I guess it fits in the category of still life but this was not my year to do those. Lots of still life studies in the 2013 365 day challenge.

Fruit Bowl

The next three photographs would fit into a category called reflections, but while reflections remained a favorite in 2014 I also began to regard them as ordinary and so fewer made it to the post a day. The photograph below was of my new-to-me truck. There is something about its teal blue color and the tint of the windows which turns it into a mirror. This is not a photograph of my truck but of my back yard reflected on my truck.

Big Blue as Mirror

Just like this isn't a picture of a pink dress on display in a window but of Main Street Trinidad where this window is. It has won an award in an exhibition and two prints of it have sold. One on metal and another on metallic paper. It is available for sale on my artist's site of Fine Art America. Print number one is hanging in my studio in Black Lake, New Mexico.

Main Street Reflections

Of all the pond reflection pictures I took this year this one made the cut and it isn't even a great reflection but it is a marvelous photograph of the surface of a pond being rippled by a faint breeze. Okay, maybe you have to be a photographer to be thrilled by that.

Trees of Water

Photographers are also thrilled by old trucks. And New Mexico has a lot of old trucks. A lot of them still run but a lot have become lawn ornaments. The one below is at Eagle Nest Museum. I like this picture because like the first truck picture I ever took it is just part of the truck. It is truck as sculpture.

The Old International

If I went back several years there would be enough umbrella pictures for their own blog. Not sure why I like umbrellas, but this is the one for this year. Maybe it is another photographer thing again

Umbrella

The 365 Day challenge for 2015 has begun. Visit Binford-Bell Studio for daily posts.

Week 33 - 2014 in Images

Day 225

The photograph before is not dawn. It is a sunset looking east. West was in reds and the clouds behind me were in pastel hues. One of those rules I try to follow is always look behind me. You can get to focused on the view before you in photography and miss so much. I think I will start always making a full slow turn when out with my camera.

Day 226

I finally have two flourishing hollyhock plants. I have loved hollyhocks since I was a kid when I and my friends used to make hollyhock dolls with toothpicks and float them on the pond. They are wonderful with water sprinkled on them. So when it had not rained I sprinkled them with the hose and then took the picture.

Day 227

My geraniums have not done well outside this year so the largest geranium I left inside the studio. It has gotten very large and bloomed all summer long. The pot contains three different colors of geraniums but the pink is one of my favorite especially with the early morning light coming through the studio windows. Photographing flowers inside means no worry about wind changing the focus.

Day 228

True dawn. But the clarity of the trees silhouetted against the glowing clouds is what I like about this photo. I usually have my wide angle on when taking dawn or sunset pictures but on this particular morning I had on my 55-300 mm and knew the light would change too much if I stopped to change lenses. I was surprised at how close the trees were on this distant hill with the 300. And I remembered to back off just a hair to ensure all in focus.

Day 229

Duck eggs are grey. I found that out with a purchase of them at the farmer's market. And the artist in me could not eat them until I had photographed them. They looked perfect in this silver serving tray. Had not done an arranged still life for a while.

Day 230

Hummingbirds are the opposite of still. But in the evening after a long rain they are so hungry and metabolism down they will sit on my garden fence and wait for an open spot at the feeders. After a summer of me feeding them they have gotten quite used to my presence and the camera so this little one just sat while I took a photograph with my long lens. I get good macros with this particular zoom. And it very nicely puts the distance out of focus on the right setting.

Day 231

My closing scene is looking south as the sun moves toward setting in the west. It was taken on the same day as the first photo. I was turning around to go back inside when I caught the quality of light in the south. No photo to the north. That is where the house sits blocking my view. But I did turn to check if the light of the setting sun was doing anything fabulous on it.

Week 38 - 365 Day Photography Challenge

Day 260 - Common Sage

Very busy week and I almost discontinued the challenge before the year was up. One of my on line friends who joined us in this challenge got bored and stopped. And there just seemed to be too much to do besides photography. But then it occurred to me that one of the reasons I do this is because of that boredom. If you want to get to Carnegie Hall you have to practice. And my schedule has not allowed painting much. But in the end days of summer the landscape garden has allowed opportunities.

Day 261 - Favorite Geranium

This year's experiment with potted geraniums under the studio window was less than highly successful but as cold weather approached I found there were a couple I really wanted to bring into the studio and winter over. Love the color of this one.

Day 262 - Fall Sunrise

And there is something about fall weather that has really inspired me to frantically try to remember where it was I put the camera. This sunrise after a rainy night was spectacular. And then there was the somewhat futil attempt to capture the full Harvest moon. Clouds got in the way but the sunset was to die for. The photo below was not featured in the challenge this week officially but I feel I must give it a place here.

Sunset over Moreno Valley

By the time my photography buddy, Jessica Duke, and I had set up our tripods on the shores of Eagle Nest Lake the sunset above had faded. Photography in fading light is one of those areas I need to practice and one of the reasons I am doing this challenge for the second year. It gets me out with the camera trying things I am not that comfortable with - like all the adjustments on my tripod.

Day 263 - Thunder cloud over Eagle Nest

And the fading light has a whole other set of issues like where all the adjustments on your camera are. And how does this lens manually focus once you find the little lever for manual focus. And trying to not rush the exposure. Kept hoping for lightning while the aperture was open but no such luck.

Day 264 - Harvest Moon?

And all that preparation and setting up the tripod, etc. did not yield a photo of the Harvest moon. Clouds got the way. But then NASA has taken plenty of pictures of full moons. I like this one of the moonlight edging the clouds with gold as well as illuminating the foliage in front of my camera. This was definitely an experiment. I widened the focus on my wide angle lens in an attempt to get a more honest light reading. You can always crop I told myself, and then did not want to.

Day 265 - Foggy Morning

Rainy nights make for foggy mornings. There is something about a foggy morning that seems to demand a black and white treatment for me. Perhaps I should make myself try something else.

Day 266 - Dance of the Flowers

And as the week drew to a close I was bemoaning that I had no more pictures to post. I grabbed the camera and was doing my routine preflight check of battery level and exposures left and was surprised to find there were images on the camera. It had been so absolutely busy I forgot my exploration of a friend's green house. I really do love orchids. There are more of them in the folder for this next week. And today I am off to Raton. That once long and boring drive has become a must for the camera.

Shepherd's Delight

Shepherd's Delight

Sunset

It wasn't the red of the clouds

which delighted us

It was that they could be

that color.

Winter took from us

the brilliance of the setting sun

giving us pale sunsets

in pastel.

This week the sun returned

in a flash of colored glory

a promise of spring to come

in Red.

J. Binford-Bell

January 2012