A few photographs from the last month.

I've been on a couple of overnight trips in the last month to take photos. The first was over to Glennwood, NM and up to St. Johns, AZ to photograph landscapes. More recently, this last weekend I drove up to Mt. Graham.
The trip to Glenwood/St. Johns was motivated by a book I read called "Otero Mesa" by Gregory McNamee, Stephen Strom, Stephen Capra, and Bill Richardson. This book was written to try to save a broad area of New Mexico from intensive oil and gas production. As an environmentalist, I find books of this sort, heavily illustrated with photographs, right up my alley as far as my passion for the natural world and photography. I can only hope someday to make photographs that will help save that natural world from destruction. I've always been interested in the grasslands east of Mule Creek, AZ which is on the way to Glenwood so I drove that way to see if I could find a photo. The best photo I make in that area is this one or a lonely tree:

On that same trip I went the mud hills north of St. Johns. I've driven through that area at least once a year for the past 25 years on my way up to visit my brother in Grants, NM. I've always thought about stopping there but when traveling I'm usually there around noon and I prefer photographing either in the evening or early morning. This time I camped in the area and so I was there for sunrise. The mud hills have interesting patterns and pebbles weather out on the surface near the bases of the hills. This is one of the photos I took in that area:

This last weekend, I drove up to the top of Mt. Graham to see if there might be any interesting meadow shots in the old forest fire area. I didn't really get into the forest fire area on this trip but I did take a few photos. I really enjoyed the cool mountain air up there and the smell of pine and fir forests is wonderful. I did find quite a few people camping and making large fires and running generators, and etc. I go to the mountains to enjoy them, listen to the birds sing, drink in the peacefulness, I don't like noisy drunken campers, I try to avoid them.

I've always wanted to take a good photograph of the corn flowers/lilly that are found at these higher elevations (over nine thousand feet in this case) so I shot some in a campground after a rain storm and I like this one.

As ever, click on the photo to see a larger size image.

A Family Visit

This past long weekend, which I made longer by taking Thursday and Friday off, I traveled to Grants, New Mexico to visit my brother and his family. Both of my nieces, who no longer live in Grants, were visiting with their families. I have one grand niece and two grand nephews. Naomi is my younger niece's daughter and turned 3 years old on May 24th. She is a sweet little girl and this was the first time we have met.

I took this photo of her at the playground at the "Riverwalk Park" in downtown Grants. Naomi and her family live in Dallas, Texas.

Next is my grand nephew Aiden Drake. I like to call him Drake instead of Aiden, I'm sure it drives his mother mad :-) He is seven years old and is a very active child.
We played a couple of games on a Nintendo Wii game console and had fun playing outside both in my brother's backyard and at the playground. Aiden Drake will be in second grade this fall in Las Cruces, NM.

Finally, there's Alex, who is four years old and wants to do everything his older brother does.
I'm sure he will eventually choose his own interests and will diverge from Aiden in this respect.

I was glad to see all these folks because this is the only branch of my family with which I have any communication. I'm sure I have other cousins and such but they are probably in New York state or in Canada. Growing up, our family moved away from our east coast roots and in the process lost contact with some of the family. I love the west and so I do not regret the cross country move.

New Mexico Ghost Towns

This last weekend, I went to New Mexico to visit a couple of new places, a couple of places I've been before, and to take a few photographs.

Friday, April 24th, I drove to the ghost town of Lake Valley, which is north of Deming, NM on route 27. This town started when there was a large silver discovery and people came to mine the silver. The silver soon ran out and then they mined manganese. The town has a few old houses, an old gas station, and a schoolhouse that doubled as the town hall. The place is owned by the Bureau of Land Management and there is a caretaker on site. The school house has been restored and is open 10AM to 4 PM Thursday-Monday. I got there about 3 PM and went in to see and photograph the schoolhouse which is the only building you can go inside of, and then spent a couple of hours wandering around photographing buildings, mine workings, water tanks and old cars. Near sunset, I went over to the Lake Valley cemetery and took a few photographs. Here is a photo of the townsite as seen from the cemetery which is on a nearby hill:


I spent that night in the town of Elephant Butte which is a suburb of Truth or Consequences, NM. The next day I took the back roads from TorC down to Las Cruces. This route took me through agricultural areas and to a couple of state parks. It was a pleasant drive. From Las Cruces, I drove to Deming and then up past City of Rocks to the Mimbres valley. I drove up the valley to the Lake Roberts area and then to Silver City.

The next morning I drove down to Lordsburg, NM to take some photos, met and talked to three different folks about the history of Lordsburg and what it is like to live there. Then I drove south of town to the ghost town of Shakespeare where they were having their "living history" day which include re-enactments of shoot-outs and firing a cannon and a number of folks dressed up in period clothes. I photographed various things including a shoot-out that was billed in the newspapers of the time as "Four Dead in Five Minutes". Here is a photo of a guy firing a revolver during the gun fight:

A couple of local explorations

This last Saturday, April 11 was a stormy day. After I finished doing my taxes (yes, I procrastinate!) I decided to wonder down to San Xavier to see how far they've gotten with the restoration and to take a couple of photos with nice clouds in the background and perhaps a rainbow. I saw a rainbow on the way down but did not catch one over the mission. The west tower of the church has been restored, the east tower needs restoration. The work done so far is beautifully done as can be seen in this photo:


I took a few photos and am happy with a few of them.

The next day, Easter, I decided to drive up to Globe to see what I could find to photograph. I figured there would still be some clouds around and Globe-Miami is on US 60 so perhaps there would be some vintage motel signs similar the the ones I found along the same road near Wickenburg last week. I had also read that they now have a steam train in Globe that takes riders out the the Apache Casino so I thought I'd check that out. It was an interesting outing, they weren't running the steam engine on the train because it was being fixed but I did see the train and the steam engine. I wondered around the area and took a few photos, I thought this image was a good juxtaposition of the image of Geronimo and the sign for the El Ray Motel:

Following the train tracks, Gila Bend to Prescott

This last weekend, I had planned a trip to Flagstaff for a meeting at the USGS. However, when I talked to the folks up there last week they said they weren't ready for a meeting yet. Bummer! I always enjoy visiting Flagstaff and this was a chance to make the trip into a photo trip. I decided to do part of the trip anyway so on Saturday, I drove up to Wickenburg by way of Gila Bend to avoid Phoenix and then on Sunday drove from there up to Prescott and then around through Payson and home, avoiding Phoenix again! Much of the trip I was following the railroad, I picked it up in Salome, AZ and followed it to as far as Skull Valley, AZ. Generally, the landscape was non-spectacular, just desert and small hills and mountains. What I found interesting were the small towns along the way that probably grew because of the railroad but are now shrinking because the train no longer stops and the interstate highways have taken most of the automobile traffic. Each small town has a character of its own, very few chain stores to be found. I particularly enjoyed some of the old motel signs, many of which are in disrepair but are still charming. I found this motel in Aguila, AZ, I think some of the neon is still working:


Driving up old highway 80 from Gila Bend to Hassayampa, I found that Phoenix is starting to leak out west of highway 85. This is really the town of Buckeye, but I consider it to be the western edge of the human infestation called Phoenix. I found this development getting started which has a water skiing lake surrounded by lots for sale. I talked to an owner of one of the lots and it turns out he is from California and bought his lot so he can build a second home to get away from the crowds and go water skiing. Of course, he is just becoming part of the same problem in Arizona! Here is the sign for the place:

Along the way north of Cotton Center, where Komatke road joins the highway, I crossed the Gila river and was glad to see water in the river. There is a dam there and pumps that take water out of the river for the various wheat and cotton fields that need to be irrigated. This is also a favorite spot for quite a few water foul and a few fishermen. I also crossed the Hassayampa river a couple of times but never saw any water in it. Here are some herons at the Gila dam:



More about this trip in my next blog post.

The San Rafael Valley and using old photo equipment.

I went and photographed last Friday down near Harshaw, a ghost town east of Patagonia, Arizona. There is an old cemetery, a couple of old buildings and a number of sycamore trees in the area. Nearby is the San Rafael Valley and I got up there near sunset and took a couple of images. This one shows the grassland from a wide angle perspective.


Last week I was reading about lens adapters for using old manual lenses on modern auto-focus digital camera bodies. I still have the Pentax equipment I inherited from my father so I ordered an adapter to allow me to mount M42 screw mount lenses on my Canon 40D and 450D. One of the things I have in that old kit is a set of three extension tubes that allow close-up photography. I don't have a set of Canon extension tubes and auto-focus really doesn't help much at high magnification anyway so I've been trying the combination of 450D, extension tubes, and my 28mm f3.5 Super Takumar lens. Here is an example image of a dime. Click on the image to see a bigger version. Its almost like using a microscope.


This coming weekend I'm heading up to Flagstaff (I have to be there Monday for work) so I'll see what I can find to photograph. I'm thinking of trying some stuff in small towns along the way, perhaps even photograph local people, we'll see.

In other news, I'm working on some of my vehicles. I traded my '59 VW panel van to a friend for some help with repairs on my '66 VW microbus. I've also taken the '54 J.C. Higgins bicycle down to the shop to have the rear wheel rebuilt and the bottom bracket replaced.

New bicycle, experiments with camera mount, and 4th Ave.

Over the weekend I traded in my 3-wheel recumbent for a new touring bicycle. I'm planning to ride across Iowa in July with a friend and decided this was a good upgrade for such a trip. I haven't ever had a real touring bike and do enjoy long bicycle trips when I get in shape and have a chance to participate in one. The ride across Iowa is an organized ride called the "Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa" or RAGBRAI.

I decided I'd try to document this event since I enjoy photography so much. Instead of having to stop my bicycle to get my camera out of the bag, I thought it would be best to mount the camera on the bicycle so it would always be at the ready. Another thing that can be done with a bicycle mounted camera is take short video clips while riding. I've come up with a handlebar mount that works fairly well although I'll be working on improvements as I go along. The mount looks like this:



I've posted a video I took yesterday while riding: movie (34 mbytes)

Also yesterday, I went down to 4th Avenue to take a few photographs. They are having the street fair and, since I don't like crowds, I went down at 7 AM to see what might be of interest. I found some of the advertising interesting as well as some of the shop windows with the sun shining into them. I've talked to some of the neighborhood folks in that area and they make quite a bit of money selling beer to visitors. Here is a photograph of one of the beer booths:



Many of the shop widows along the street have security screens or grates across their windows when they are closed. I photographed this dragon behind one of the grates, he looks angry at being imprisoned!