Week 25 - 2017 in Photographs

Day 169

 If there is a theme to this week it is landscape. This was the week I wish I had the extra wide angle lens my sister owns. Everything I pointed my camera at seemed to sweep beyond my wide angle lens. So the photos here are a just a segment of what opened before.

Day 170

 Framing of a photograph may be becoming an art of the past because digital and mega pixels means you can just shoot and come back to your studio and crop to the important part.

I began photography at seven and so I still frame in the field. Though I admit with the zoom lens I have learned to bracket manually. Wider than I think I want and then narrower than I think I want, even though narrower can be achieved with cropping back in the dry dark room. What cropping there was this week was off the top and the bottom.

In the wetlands photo below there is a road and a culvert where I am typing. 

Day 171

 And in this cloudscape the camera lens captured sky and fence I did not want. The original still exists as a digital file on my computer, but this is the crop I like.

Day 172

 I love the dawn views from my deck. I have photographed them a lot. But below the bottom fringe of trees are telephone wires and the neighbors' houses. A horse barn made of scrap materials and a horse trailer which has seen better days.

Day 173

 And these daisies bloom in an open lot between two houses beside a road.

Day 174

 And this field of wild irises goes beyond both edges of the photo; beyond the expanse of my wide angle lens. The mountain behind and the road in front was unnecessary. But I decided I liked the dry grasses in the bar ditch and even the snow fence. They define the seasons before the purple spring. And the cattle add scale and depth.

Day 175

Week 24 - 2017 in Photographs

Day 162

This is my "How Green is My Valley" week. Late snows and spring rains combined to make everything green.
After several years of drought we have been pulling out of aquifer depletion and moving back to lush meadows and healthy forests.

Day 163

Yes, there is a Black Lake. In fact, it used to cover much of the valley pictured in the photos below.
A meadow which was once a lake is called a cienega. My house is perched on the edge of once was another cienega on the Little Coyote West.

Day 164

The first five photographs featured this week were taken on one day of extraordinary light and clouds over the Black Lake Valley just a few miles south of my house.
This area stood in for Montana during the filming of Lonesome Dove.
But this is New Mexico.

Day 165

This area was settled during the 1762 Homestead Act and combined by the family settling it 160 acres a time into one of the larger ranches in New Mexico. It is still an active ranch though parts of the original holdings have been sold off.

Day 166

The two photographs below are from the Moreno Valley just to the north of my house. It too is very green.

And the wild iris have spilled down the side valleys running through ranch land toward Eagle Nest Lake.

Day 167

Day 168

The Sangre de Cristo Mountains are at the heart of all these photographs. I live on the wet side of this mountain range.

Taos, New Mexico is on the other side.

Week 24 - 2015 in Photographs

Day 162 - Apache Plume

I love Apache Plume shrubs. It has a delightful white flower which I almost always miss. It is the feathery pink fruits or seeds which first attract my attention. With this wet spring they seem to be everywhere creating a pink haze above the greens.

Day 163
Purple Robe Locust

This week it seems it was flowers which caught my eye. When I set out to attempt to identify those I had captured with my camera I found myself wishing I had paid more attention to my mother. She had the green thumb and always said mine was brown. Ergo why know the names of flowers I was going to kill. But something must have penetrated my thick head because I knew the flowering tree above was a locust. But obviously not a honey locust because they have yellow flowers. But I was close enough to google.

Day 164 - Coneflower???

I am not in the same good space with the the wonderful plant above. I thought because of its center it was a coneflower but the foliage is all wrong. This is getting past just identifying my subject because I would love to have this flower in my yard. Somewhere in the back of my brain sprung Bishop's Hat but it isn't that either. If you know please leave a comment or I will be running around with a print from nursery to nursery.

Day 165

At the same location as Purple Robe Locust and the mystery flower was this light fixture. It was not turned on. But the angle of the sun shining down through it made it glow like it was on.

Day 166

People in the flower garden at Ojo Caliente Spa seemed every bit as colorful as the flowers. I am practicing taking photos of people. At one time the candid shot of people at rallies or parties was my forte. I got hired to record such events. And quite loved to do it because it put the camera between them and me having to make small talk. I also excelled at taking portraits of people. Not the studio type but of my subject in gardens or forests. What you do not practice you lose. I am sneaking back to being comfortable with two legged creatures.

Day 167 - Wild Iris

The wild iris are everywhere this spring because of the rain. During the drought they almost vanished from southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. But now there are great spills of them running down the low washes from the mountains. I look forward to recording more of them this year.

Day 168

The snow is vanishing from the peaks. Noticed yesterday there was less snow than when I took this photo. Note to self: Go to this same location and take another photograph.