Mar 15
Santa Fe, New Mexico, is one of my favorite cities. Great for photography, great for shopping, great for opera, great for relaxing.
After visiting Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, I drove up to Santa Fe for an afternoon. It was the Christian season of Lent, and the St. Francis Cathedral had a figure of Christ on the cross in purple fabric. In the foreground is a statue by Estella Loretto.
I recently enjoyed a great visit to Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument. It’s between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico. This monument is famous for its rock formations, but I didn’t really know what to expect.
From the moment I drove up to the gate, I felt welcomed. “Thanks for coming here!”, said the ranger—I think because he was proud of this place.
I visited the day after a snowstorm came through. Perhaps because I grew up reading Arizona Highways, I think that snow in the desert is a beautiful thing.
Here are a couple of self-portraits, giving you an idea of the scale of the rock formations.
I’ll be back, I’m sure.
Dec 5
I could have gone a variety of different routes to Socorro, but I went with the advice of my Garmin GPS, by way of San Angelo, Roswell, and Carrizozo. (Sadly, it was too late to pay my respects at Smokey the Bear’s grave on the way through Capitan.)
Saturday, November 29 – Tuesday, December 2
5:00 AM. Time to get up and start three and a half days of intense, frustrating, yet relaxing, bird photography at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, south of Socorro. It wasn’t long before I saw one of my photography mentors, Arthur Morris.
Artie is arguably the world’s greatest bird photographer. He leads photo tours all around the world. He’s sometimes a little rough around the edges, but a very good teacher. You can learn a lot from Artie just by being nearby as he yells advice to his workshop students, and as he weighs the options to keep shooting or move on to another spot. I also recommend his book, The Art of Bird Photography II, a 916-page book for which I did a thorough editorial review.
Favorite 2008 Artie Morris quote: “These silhouettes are the easiest situation for auto-focus. If you can’t get your camera to auto-focus here, you should take up knitting.”
I also saw a couple of other pro photographers I know, Robert O’Toole and Larry Ditto. Larry lives down in McAllen, and had his own workshop group at Bosque. I first met him on a trip to the cloud forest near Gómez Farías, Tamaulipas, Mexico. I also introduced myself to another pro I recognized, Laurie Excell, leading her own small photo tour.
My friend Jennifer and I first met on a photo workshop in Utah a few years ago, and we’ve stayed in touch and done other photo adventures together. She’s an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and an assistant professor at the Harvard Medical School.
Rounding out our trio was my friend Nicole, a great photographer and one of my best friends.
Here are a few of my favorite images. Click on each to enlarge. (More available on bhpowell.com.)
Here’s a silhouette of my friend Nicole, as we tried to hold on to the last bit of light.
This next shot is with an infrared fisheye, pointed straight up as snow geese flew overhead. You can see a bit of the ground at the corners.
Tuesday morning, we were up for one final dawn photo shoot, then back to the hotel to check out, and off to Albuquerque. I dropped Nicole and Jen off at the airport, and drove on to a work meeting in Albuquerque.
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