Casa Grande Trading Post

Located on New Mexico's Turquoise Trail, Los Cerrillos is an old mining town clinging to life.  I had explored this small town once or twice due to its close proximity to Santa Fe when I decided to visit there once again with my wife last December.  We drove the dusty streets of this small town, checking out the old buildings and decay and wondering what kept people in this once bustling mining town.  On a whim we decided to follow the sign to the Casa Grande Trading Post and Petting Zoo and see what it had to offer.

Upon entering the place it quickly became apparent that this was a treasure trove of antiques, kitsch, junk, and odd collectibles - a perfect place for exploring with a camera. I quickly paid the $2 to go into the "Cerrillos Turquoise Mining Museum" section of the building and starting taking pictures.  The colors and light, clutter and shadow made for an interesting composition...

I had my wide angle lens mounted on my camera that day, and after taking some wide shots of the room, I noticed the sunlight pouring in through the windows.  The low, cool,  afternoon December sunlight was further softened by the dust and dirt on the windows; the light and shadow and dust pulled me in as I pushed in close and took a few shots... 

And I pushed in even closer...

We came back in February, so I could explore the museum further and my wife could feed the Llama and goats and birds again...  

Again the combination of color, light, shadow, antiques, and junk made me stop...

Here the late afternoon sunlight touching the old bottles and rocks caught my eye...

All the way in the back of the building I saw this window...

Just last month I was there again, this time with a visitor from out of town.  I knew we would be stopping there as part of a morning road trip, and this time I brought my fisheye lens along.  My hope was that I could get a "different" type of shot, one that pulled in as much of the room as possible.  After several attempts, this is the shot that I settled on as being "the best."  Normally I would think about correcting the fisheye distortion, but in this instance, I don't think it detracts from the feel of the scene...

I think that is absolutely the value in revisiting a place, even a small place (with a lot of character) like the Casa Grande Trading Post and Petting Zoo.  Every time I've been there I've seen the place a bit differently.  Time of year, time of day, choice of lens, passage of time and changing taste and perspective of the individual all play into how you view a place on a particular day...

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 10-24 DX (Dec ), Nikkor 18-55 DX (Feb ), Nikkor 10.5 DX Fisheye (July )

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Natural Bridges National Monument

Last April we took advantage of a three-day weekend to run over to Canyon De Chelly National Monument.  One morning, on a whim, we headed north to drive through Monument Valley (which I wrote about here).  After driving the loop through Monument Valley and taking a few photos, we headed north with no real plan in mind.  Soon after passing through Mexican Hat, Utah, we started debating what to do next when I saw a sign for Natural Bridges National Monument.  A quick conversation later we were headed in that direction, not being sure - other than what the sign would imply - of what lay ahead...

At the Natural Bridges National Monument Visitor's Center we grabbed a map and learned that there was a loop drive through the park that stopped at overlooks for each of the three natural bridges within the park, with trails that lead down to each of the bridges.

The first stop was Sipapu Bridge.  Not satisfied with the view from the overlook, I decided to hike down.  The trail is .6 mile one way, with a 500 foot descent down to Sipapu Bridge, which, when taking into consideration that you're at about 6,000 feet elevation and the temperature is around 90 degrees...  Let's just say that I worked up quite a sweat by the time I got back to the car!...  Once I got to a place with a good, level view of the arch, I took a look at the scene with my ultra wide angle lens (a Nikkor 10-24 DX) and quickly realized that there was no way I could include the whole scene in one shot.  Fortunately, I had decided to bring my fisheye lens along as well.  Normally a fisheye lens introduces too much curvature to a scene, unless held relatively level to the horizon.  In this instance the scene was so wide that the only way I could include the arch in its entirety was to use the fisheye.  I carefully composed and took a few shots...

I then followed the trail further down and got closer the bottom of the ravine...

After climbing back up, I walked along the ridge a bit to get a different perspective, looking down at the arch.  I decided to keep shooting with the fisheye, to include as much of the landscape in the shot as possible, aiming to get that "sweeping" look to the shot...

Kachina Bridge was the next stop.  The hike down to Kachina Bridge was .75 mile, with a 400 ft descent, but not quite as strenuous as the one that lead to Sipapu Bridge, having a more gradual descent and longer switchbacks.  Once I made it to the floor of the ravine I approached the arch from the dry creek bed, stopping to take a few shots along the way...

Here I used the arch as a frame, capturing the window of blue sky against the beige rock...

I walked around a bit, through the arch and out the other side.  Looking back through Kachina Bridge, I pushed in tight, again using the bridge as a frame for the photo.  Later when I was processing photos from this trip, I thought that this particular shot would benefit from a black and white conversion...

The last stop was Owachomo Bridge.  The path to Owachomo Bridge was only .2 mile, with a descent of 180 feet.  As I got close the the bridge I noticed that the sun was close to the top of the arch, so I stopped the lens down to f22 and tried to position myself to where the edge of the sun just clipped the top of the arch, to get a small, tight sunburst...

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 10.5 DX Fisheye

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The Lone Tree

The "lone tree" shot.  I was watching a video recently with a cheeky title like "photography cliches that must die" or something similar, and the "lone tree" shot appeared on the list.  I didn't think much of it at the time, but after a while it worked its way back into my mind, and I wondered for a moment - is it a cliche?  That quickly passed, replaced by what I thought was a more important idea - does it matter?

I don't think it matters.  I could say something along the lines of a cliche is a cliche for a reason - because it works.  But that would stray from my main thought.  I think the only thing that matters is that I continue to photograph things that catch my eye and continue to keep pushing myself to get better.  Thinking about the "lone tree" shot did prompt me to go through my files and look for examples I had on hand.  Some of those, along with brief explanations of where I was or what I was thinking at the moment (or both) follow...

Plaza Blanca, which Georgia O'Keeffe called "The White Place" and painted on several occasions, is located near Abiquiu, New Mexico.  After walking down the hill to where a dry creek bed bisected the area, I saw this lone cottonwood tree, its yellow leaves shimmering in the early morning sun. The golden leaves really stood out against the cool blue early morning sky...

The same morning at Plaza Blanca we (my wife and I, who was along for the hike) followed the creek bed, and as we rounded the corner, I saw this tree and noticed the contrast between the early morning light in the leaves against the white box canyon walls...

One morning while driving through north-central Arizona, I decided that I wanted to take a quick detour to Seligman, Arizona, to take in a little Route 66 nostalgia.  The morning was cool, and a thick fog blanketed the landscape.  This tree stood out against the grey of the morning...

Capital Reef National Monument, located in south-central Utah, was intended to be a quick stop on the route from Zion National Park to Moab, but my wife and I were quickly drawn in by the unexpected beauty of the area.  Given that we were in southern Utah, an area known for its unrelenting natural beauty, it should have been anticipated.  But, even after having been to Zion and Bryce Canyon National Park in consecutive days, the beauty of the area was remarkable.  Before checking into our hotel for the evening, we spent some time looking around, and soon I saw this juniper tree, with the overcast skies and red rocks in the background...

This was taken last winter while driving down a country road over La Bajada Mesa, north of Los Cerrollos, New Mexico.  I liked how the look of the tree, lying dormant in winter, matched the muted winter landscape...

This shot was taken at Junction Overlook on the North Rim of Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona.  With the sun still high in the afternoon sky, I decided to incorporate  the tree's shadow in the foreground and stopped down my lens to f22 to get a starburst from the sun near the top of the frame...

Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, located about 40 miles southwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a place I've visited on several occasions (and blogged about as well).  A trail leads through a slot canyon and works its way to a lookout above, where hikers can look back down into the canyon.  When hiking through the slot canyon a few weeks ago I saw this tree high on the canyon wall, which seemed to flourish despite its seemingly precarious hold...

I'm tempted to end with another cliche: every picture tells a story.  Or, every tree tells a story...

Nikon D7000, lenses, from top - Nikkor 10-24 DX (first two), Nikkor 18-55 DX (next four), Nikkor 16-85 DX VR (last shot)

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Slowing Down

As I've written recently, one of things the drew me to photography was photographing flowers.  At first I photographed a lot of flowers, then slowly got away from that as I started to explore landscape photography, travel more, and in general spent more time covering as much ground as possible in places I hadn't been before.  I got some good photographs out of these efforts, but I probably missed just as many, if not more, by not slowing down a bit and trying to look around, trying to see the beauty that exists in what at first appears to be the mundane.

In the last year as I've explored New Mexico, I've started to slow down a little, to try and appreciate the smaller things.  Doors, windows, old motel signs, ristras, wagon wheels, I've photographed them all, repeatedly, sought them out, sought to appreciate the smaller parts of a larger whole.  I've set "assignments" for myself, things I want to photograph, techniques I've wanted to explore, confined myself to only bringing one lens along on a day trip, all in a way to keep pushing myself forward.

As I wrote recently, I hadn't used my macro lens in a quite a while, but that morning spent with my macro lens, just poking around my own backyard, was another example of what could be found when I took the time to slow down...

Recently northern New Mexico has seen some consistent rain, a welcome relief from the heat and four years of exceptional drought.  Wildflowers have been in full bloom, and my wife and I decided to go for a drive down some isolated country roads to look for wild sunflowers, which I remember seeing last year. I didn't bring my macro lens along as I wanted a little flexibility in terms of reach and the ability to go wide if a monsoon suddenly rolled in with some drama in the skies.

At first it looked like we had missed the peak of the sunflower bloom, as we saw more dead headed plants than live ones, but soon we came upon a nice stretch of them.  The morning light had faded, and the breeze had kicked up a little bit, so at first I didn't think I'd be able to get any shots in.  The sunflowers that were facing me were already washed out from the bright light, and getting too close to them, with the breeze blowing, made it difficult to get a sharp photo.

After a few shots I decided to concentrate on the flowers that were turned towards the sun, and shoot those from the back so I could catch the sunlight glowing through the petals.  I also took a few steps back, chose the widest aperture possible, and racked my lens all the way out to compress and blur the background as much as possible.  This first shot had some nice light hitting the petals of the flower, but I was totally dissatisfied with the background.

Walking down the road a bit I saw a taller flower that was pointing directly up, so I crouched down just a little bit to try and get a "level" shot of it against the blue sky.

Then it was just a matter of trying to grab a few shots...

Varying the angle to emphasize a little less (above) or a little more (below) of the sky...

Are these great shots?  No.  Will they go in my portfolio?  No.  But they gave me a chance to look a little differently at things again, try different techniques, and push myself a little farther down the road...

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 16-85 DX VR

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Same, But Different

Whether it's taking advantage of a change in seasons, an opportunity to use new gear, or simply approaching an old subject from a new perspective, I think there's merit to revisiting and rephotographing favorite (or even not so favored) subjects.

Shortly after moving to Santa Fe we started to go on day trips, checking out our new home and the surrounding area.  One of the first places we went was Georgia O'Keefe's Ghost Ranch near Abiquiu.  On the way to our destination we stopped at a road side pull out, where a sharp bend in the Rio Chama lay below.  I was drawn in by the red rocks, the greenery lining the river, the dark hills in the background, and I spent some time photographing the area.  The only negative aspect was the cloudless sky and harsh light of the midday sun, so I composed this shot with a just a small slice of sky at the top of the frame.  July 2013...

A couple of months later we were in the area again.  This time I crouched down to get the yellow leaves of the chamisa in the foreground, included more of the sky to include the clouds, and composed the shot to look straight down the river...  September 2013...

With a visitor in town, once again we headed out towards Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch, an early morning drive on Christmas Eve.  After we pulled over for a short break, I hopped over the guard rail and got down on one knee, aiming my camera down and going as wide as the lens would allow to include the bend in the river.  I liked the contrast the fresh dusting of snow in the hills brought to the scene and colors brought out by the shallow river.  December 2013...

Last month I found myself standing in that spot again, staring out at the river.  I had a  (relatively) new lens with me this time, one that allowed me to take in a little more of the scene.  Once again I hopped the guard rail and composed the photo to include the bend in the river, this time turning to the left a bit for a slightly different view, including more of the sky to take in the clouds floating over the scene.  June 2014...

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 18-55 DX (first three photos), Nikkor 16-85 DX VR (last photo)

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The Not So Obvious

Last weekend we went on a long drive past Taos to Questa, then decided on a whim to drive the loop through that area known as the Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway.  On the way back to Santa Fe, we passed through Taos and stopped at the San Francisco de Assisi Mission Church in Rancho de Taos, a place I've written about previously.  This church, specifically the rear exterior, was famously painted by Georgia O'Keeffe and photographed by Ansel Adams, among others.  

After we parked, I started to walk around, taking a few shots of the rear of the church, but I wanted to capture more than the standard shots of the rear (and front) of the building.  I began to look around, not at the church as much as the buildings that lined the narrow street to the left.  Before long these flowers caught my eye, and I liked how the flowers looked with the adobe wall in the background, as well as the texture of the wall itself...

I then walked around the back of the church to the street on the other side of the church, taking a few shots, when I saw this window.  The classic blue window nestled in the adobe wall, the rostra/wreath hanging to the side, the flowers in the blue pot sitting below the window all combined for a nice composition...

A few steps to the left, on the other side of the building doorway, was another blue window.  The window, wall, and flowers  made this an easy shot to take...

Turning towards the church, I decided to take a few shots of the statue of Saint Francis of Assisi that stands in the church's front courtyard.  I decided to move in close and isolate the statue a bit, to make the statue the focus...

Walking back to the car I saw this single pot sitting in a corner of the church...

I hadn't planned on stopping at this church that day, since I had already taken photos of it previously.  It was the clouds in the sky that pulled me in (thinking that they would make a good backdrop for a few photos), but the smaller things like windows and textures were what captured my imagination...

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 16-85 DX VR
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Monument Rocks

In western Kansas, amongst the crops that blanket this flat land, lie Monument Rocks, a series of rock formations, columns of chalk that jut out of the landscape like a sore thumb...  

I first heard about Monument Rocks in May 2008 when two of my favorite photographers, Moose Peterson and Laurie Excell, stopped by the area while chasing storms across the Southwest and Midwest.  I was curious, as I was born in Kansas and spent my first eight years or so living there, had visited off and on over the years, and yet had never heard of this place.  

In July 2009 I returned to Kansas to visit family, and I made a note to stop at Monument Rocks as I passed through the area.  A short side trip down a two lane road, then seven miles through pasture land and I was there...  

I spent some time walking around the area, and looking east through a hole in one of the columns, I could see another, smaller column off in the distance.  Using the hole in the column of chalk as a frame was an obvious, but still interesting shot...

This past weekend I was passing through the area again, and I made a point of making this part of our trip.  Again I spent time exploring, and with the sun setting I took advantage of this to incorporate a starburst (by stopping down to f16) in a couple of many of my shots.  First I shot the same hole in the rock column as last time, this time facing east, making sure to include a good amount of sky in the shot...

Then I moved in closer, eliminating the sky around the edges of the photo...

Moving north a little way, I liked how the sun shone through a small notch in the top of this rock formation, so again I went for the starburst...

On the northern end of the rock formations I noticed that the clouds were taking on some character, so I decided to include more of the sky in a few shots.  When I was processing photos later it quickly became apparent that going with a black and white look may be interesting...

Monument Rocks is a little known place literally out in the middle of nowhere, not really a  "destination", but if you're in the area and need to stop and stretch your legs for a bit, it's a nice break from the endless miles of corn fields and cow pastures...

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First photo taken using a Nikon D40 with a Nikkor 18-55 DX lens
Second photo taken using a Nikon D40 with a Nikkor 55-200 DX VR lens
Last four photos taken using a Nikon D7000 with a Nikkor 16-85 DX VR lens