Spunk and Najar sparring in the catio.
Month: January 2015
Drags On The Rio Grande
After fording the shallows of the west fork of the Rio Grande to one of the large sandbars in the middle of the river, I was faced with a forest of salt cedar interspersed with thorny Russian Olive Trees as I bushwhacked my way across the sandbar to see what was happening along the wider, deeper water running on the east side of the sandbar. Figuring they were hidden from the shutters and eyes of humans they commonly see along the accessible areas to the river, the Sandhill Cranes were playing games, drag racing to be more specific, very much like what you might see in an old Far Side comic.
As I emerged from the orange-yellow briar patch, a couple of Sandhill Cranes took off in a race down the river, while another pair quivered behind the barbed wire starting line ready to start their drag race down the river. I was able to catch the second pair on film and narrate the action in each of the photos below.
Sunset in Purple
I walked a mile and a half south of the house and got the sunset looking northeast, east and south while standing in the middle of the Rio Grande. Besides the normal shades of yellows, pinks and blues, the interesting shaped clouds to the north turned purple.
Cranes On Blue
Climb Sixteen Floors, What Do You Get?
Another day older and 320 steps
Saint Peter ain’t a callin’ cuz he knows I can’t go
My legs are like jelly and terribly sore
If you are not familiar with Tennessee Ernie Ford’s hit song “Sixteen Tons” a version from 1956 can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Joo90ZWrUkU
A modern version by Jeff Beck and ZZ Top with the 1956 film above playing in the background can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2aqvKY6zLc
Laurie’s parents gave us Fitbits® for Christmas. These little devices track your steps, how many floors you climb, calories burned, active minutes, total miles, and log your sleep among other things. Laurie and I have gone a little nuts with daily goals and challenging each other. She’s been climbing the stairs in the buildings at UNM between classes to get stair climbing in, leaving me in the dust on the floors. So today, I talked Bruski into walking over to the New Mexico Bank building and climbing the stairs with me. There are sixteen floors, but my Fitbit logged 18 floors because there are two flights of stairs from the lobby to the first floor. We got in 6 active minutes from the lobby to the 16th floor, according to the Fitbit, and it about did me in. Brusk said he could feel it in his legs. Climbing sixteen floors also gave us a nice view to the west above downtown Albuquerque.
A Shot In The Dark
A dark shot, shot in the dark of a shot in the dark, shot on a dark street downtown.
Innocence
Najar looking sweet and innocent. Don’t buy it!
The Eve Of Construction: A Groundbreaking Experience
Over two years ago they said “Give up your parking spaces, a grocery store is at hand!” And the city took out the bumpers, fenced the lot, and the lot sat empty. And yet no grocery store. A year went by, and they used it for a staging area to finish the multi-colored apartments across the street. And yet no grocery store. With the apartments finished, the fences came down, “No Parking” signs went up, and yet no grocery store. People started parking on the periphery and then in the still empty lot. And yet no grocery store. The “No Parking” signs disappeared, more parked cars, movie studios set up staging one day and disappear the next. Another year gone by, and yet no grocery store. Then came Monday’s announcement of the ground breaking for the new grocery store on Tuesday. Yesterday was gloomy and cold as the people gathered and the politicians and business representatives gave their speeches. Shovels ready, cameras rolling, the grocery store is at hand. Hooray! Let the destruction begin.
The Cine Experiment
I bought some Cine Film re-engineered for 35mm to be developed by standard C41 process. This is a high speed tungsten film normally used for cinematography. I had put the roll of film in my Canon F1 intending to shoot film along with digital of the fashion show at Gears & Glamour. However, since the fashion show was in the dark, and I hadn’t worked with the film before, I didn’t want to push it beyond its recommended ISO 800 until I had used it. Since this film is best used indoors or at night under tungsten street lighting, I only took a few shots in the well lighted prep area at Gears & Glamour, a few more at the West Side Chorale’s winter concert, and then decided to use it outdoors with a 600 mm lens. I knew the color would be off in daylight, but I wanted to see how well I could hand hold a 600 mm lens with high speed film.
I got a surprise when I got to the end of the roll of film. I noticed the advance didn’t stop, and when I tried rewinding the film, the knob turned freely. I advanced the film a couple more times to see it would stop — it didn’t, so I took the camera into the darkroom, opened it in the dark and carefully felt by the take-up spool, and discovered the film had not been secured to the spool in the canister. I took out the canister, and as carefully as I could opened it up with a can opener. I carefully pulled the film out of the camera, but when the last of it popped off the take-up spool, the coiled mess of film slipped from my hands and fell to the floor. Remember, I’m in total darkness, so I bent down, felt around at my feet, found the pile of film, gently picked it up, found an end to the film, found the spool from the canister and rewound the film back onto the spool. I put the spool back in the canister and forced the end cap back onto the canister. When I got the negatives back, the canister didn’t seal back up tightly around the edges after opening it (I had suspected as much), so the last frames on the roll had light leaks. This was a mystery, because the last frames should be on the inside of the spool and the first frames on the outside where they would be affected by light leaks in the seal around the outer edge of the end cap. Then I remembered dropping the film, so I must have rolled it back on the spool reverse of how the photos were taken.
The lead photo is frame 24, the last image taken, and the effect of the light leaks from being on the outer edge in the canister are pretty interesting. The rest of the images, shown in order taken, were not affected by the leaks on the edge of the canister.
Love Spat
Spunk and Najar had a little spat initiated by Spunk. However, Najar is standing up to Spunk these days and in many cases she is stalking and attacking him first. Spunk doesn’t quite know what to think of being stalked and attacked, since he has been the aggressor up until we introduced Najar into the mix.
Off Center & Not Even 