Merry Christmas! Resa’s Tree over the casita around Christmastime in 2004.trees
My photographer for Day 3 is Randall who has Global Sojourns Photography at https://dalocollis.com/. Randall is a fantastic photographer and an excellent writer who combines philosophy with his travel photography.
Jupiter and Saturn shining through a thin layer of clouds on Christmas Eve, 2020.
Day 3 is a series of photos from the De Na Zin Wilderness area south of Farmington, New Mexico. On our way back from the Native Plant Society conference in 2008, many of the participants stopped by the badlands. While most of the group was looking at plants, I and another photographer were occupied with the landscapes. We got separated from the group several times. In this area, which is part of the Bisti Badlands, there are whole petrified trees, hoodoos (formations that were platforms for trees), fossils, and well-sculpted barren landscapes.
Off Center & Not Even 
Magnificent photos, Tim. The landscape is spectacular! Every photo is gorgeous!
Thanks, Mia. It’s a really cool area.
Thanks for taking me there! There was a road trip I took TO the Badlands, and I didn’t make it for serendipity reasons because of a certain billboard I saw flat out in 6th gear racing to to the Badlands to make them by sunrise. Didn;t make it then. Made it now so to speak. Thank you, Tim!
You are welcome, Jordan. I’m happy you finally got to see a little bit of the badlands. Happy Holidays! Thanks, for dropping by.
That is some beautiful, rugged landscape, Tim. Nice series of photos!
Thanks, Lavinia. A lot of dinosaur skeletons have been found in the badlands.
Merry Christmas to you and Laurie, Tim!
Merry Christmas, Lavinia.
Auguri Timothy
Greetings, Simona.
The Badlands don’t look bad at all 🙂 Maybe rugged but most of all very beautiful !
They are beautiful, for sure. Thanks, picpholio.
Happy Holidays! Fascinating contrasts of landscape, the snow of 2004 with the Badlands.
That it is. Thanks, Puzzleblume.
Incredible! Merry Christmas, Tim!
Thanks, Tiffany. Merry Christmas.
Really fantastic shots, Tim!
(Especially my tree!)xo
I’m making pies, but wanted to pop in and see what you are up to with the photo challenge, and to say:
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!
Thanks, Resa, Merry Christmas!
Wow – these are amazing!
I’m inclined to think that great skies follow you wherever you are!!!! 😉
Those were August skies that we get with the mansoon season. I was really happy with the clouds that day giving perspective to the vastness of the badlands.
Well, so am I!!! 😉
These photographs are amazing. They are National Geographic worthy and the photo of the campground with Christmas tree is stunning. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas Tim!
Thanks, Holly. How was your Christmas. Did any gators drop in?
No gators, they stayed on there river banks to warm up. It was quite chilly !
The third down, brought home to me that I haven’t seen any Clint Eastwood movies for ages, the Good the Bad and the Ugly is usually shown on the box, but not this year.
Fantastic photography, as usual, mate. Cheers.
Hi Inchcock. Many Spaghetti Westerns were filmed in southern Spain. The landscapes are very similar to New Mexican Landscapes.
Oh, yes, I’d forgotten they called the Spaghetti Westerns, Tim.
I love Spaghetti westerns. If you get a chance to see “Compañaros” is a really good one.
I’ve not heard of that one, Tim. I’ll look it up: Found it, this comment started the page off:
“Compañeros is often called Corbucci’s last great movie. It can be seen as the historic pendant of Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars. Fistful was not the first western made in Italy, but it has been identified as the true beginning of the genre. Compañeros was not the last spaghetti western, but it’s a worthy conclusion of its glory years.”
Glad you told me of it, Tim. I’ll be looking for it now.
If you are feeling adventurous, see if you can find “Yojimbo” by Akira Kurosawa. “A Fist Full of Dollars” is a Spaghetti Western of “Yojimbo”. Kurosawa sued Sergio Leone over stealing his movie plot. They eventually settle out of court and Kurosawa got 15% of the proceeds from “A Fist Full of Dollars”. If you haven’t seen Kurosawa films they are wonderful.
Cheers Tim, I’ll have a search, sounds interesting to me, to find a sort of new Fist Full film.
Was a tad busy/lazy the past couple of days 😉
I love these! It brought me back to when I crossed Canada on two separate trips, both bringing me to Alberta’s badlands – our countries share these fabulous phenomena!
I’ll bet Alberta’s are quite a sight also. The Albertosaurus was named for the province. Badlands are great habitats for dinosaur skeletons. Thanks, Dale.
They look just like yours 🙂
I know we have two really cool sites within our badlands to see dinosaur skeletons.
Pleasure is mine.
Spectacular, wow what a lot of variety in the landscape and just so beautifully captured by your lens my friend. You are something else. I love how there are so many colors in the hard dirt and you can see all these reds. Just gorgeous work Tim. Love to you and your family. xoxoxo Joni
The desert is very colorful. A lot of people only see browns and grays from the shock of not seeing green and vegetation. But I love the desert for all the colorful, exposed geology. Thanks, Joni.
My pleasure, that was the first thing I noticed. Thank you Tim, you really captured the beauty. 🤗💕❤️⭐️
Thank you very much, Tim, for the mention, it is an honor coming from you ~ a great feeling and good way to enter the last week of the year. Also, the selections/subject of photos you chose are perfect: the photo of Jupiter and Saturn I’ve been enjoying the past few days. But the magic of the De Na Zin Wilderness are incredible ~ there is nothing quite like badlands, rugged and full of character. I’ve yet to explore any of the badlands o f the States, Bisti Badlands are now on my list and of course the Badlands of S. Dakota are a sight I hope to see soon. The coffee mug I use in Czech is of the Badlands National Park to remind me to return home as much as possible. Cheers to you and the new year, and thank you again. Take care, my friend.
Thanks, Randall. You will love Bisti Badlands. It’s part of the De Na Zin Wilderness area. I’ve not been to S Dakota. Maybe one of these days.
I think both Bisti and S.Dakota are possible at some point in my life… the SW of the States I need to explore. I have come to the harsh realization that all of the places I have on my “must see” list number far more than available days, but I think that is kind of cool too ~ and amazing world and life we live in. Cheers to a peaceful new year.
Wow, stunning views. You’ve mentioned two great blogs and friends in one post too, Resa (and her beautiful tree) and Randall. Why are they called Badlands are there harsh seasons there or too many wild beasts?
Thanks, Charlotte. They are badlands because they have bad soils that don’t support much vegetation growth. They are rough, eroded and uninhabitable for people and many types of animals.
Ah well that makes sense. I wonder if modern farming techniques will make badlands habitable or perhaps they are better left as nature intended.
They are better left as nature intended. We have lots of space in New Mexico. England has 50,645 square miles with around 56 million people. New Mexico has 121,590 square miles and around 2.5 million people. You could fit almost 2.5 Englands in New Mexico.
The biggest issue with badlands out here is there is a lot of natural gas and oil under them. There are constant fights over oil companies wanting to drill in wilderness areas. New Mexico gets a lot of it’s revenue from “Serverance Taxes” so the state has a real problem. If it doesn’t allow drilling for oild and git or permits for mining, it doesn’t get revenue. If if does allow drilling and mining its not doing its job protecting natural resources and the environment.
Thats very interesting, when they talk about fracking in England it creates a lot of controversy because often its quite close to where people live. My brother did a Geography degree and is really interested in all this subject, he specialised in human geography so tended towards habitats and future proofing cities. I will check out a map later.
My undergraduate degree is in geography. I started out in cartography, but then went into human geography, mostly urban and rural planning. I still do a lot of mapping, but it’s all on the web now. I don’t think many universities offer degrees in Geography in the USA these days.
You and Tom would get along great he did a four year MA at Glasgow University (one of the best in the UK for Geography) with added archeology and psychology modules in his first year. He used to do a blog called Let’s Geog but he gave up on it sadly. There is a movement here away from social sciences, arts and humanities now that we pay for our degrees (up to 2008 all degrees were free and often came with grants to study) to take STEM subjects and LAW.
STEM is all the rage here right now. Art, music and literature are so important to a well-rounded education. It’s sad because people rely on other people’s art, music, and writing.
I’m seeing and hearing a trend of less creativity and much more formulaic and similar looking and sounding art and music. Commercial Pop and Country music have always had their stylistic formulas recording artists have to abide by, but with the Internet and digital recording, you don’t have to be enslaved by the formulas and stylistic edicts of commercial music.
I see these really talented musicians on YouTube that all they do is covers of popular songs. They put so much energy into songs that you can find hundreds of excellent covers for, although few add anything to the original song. I would like to see those mucisians put that creative energy into making original music. It gets really hard to find really decent original music in pop, rock, etc. People want to stick to the formulas. But then again, you have to do what sells, I suppose.
While people don’t tend to copy art like musician cover songs, there are certain styles and stylized caracatures that I see over and over and over. You have to learn the basics, it’s good to copy the best until you can make your creative contribution. The problem is a lot of people don’t seem to want to or be able to get across the line into creative originality.
All good points Timothy. When I composed songs as part of my degree I was always rather off the wall, I liked them but they didn’t always tick the right boxes lol. I enjoy singing new contemporary works, I particularly enjoy it if the composer leaves me free to add some of my own interpretation and character into a piece, although I do always respect their intentions, sometimes new pieces can expect very unusual connections. In between lockdown periods I recorded a new song cycle for a composer called Tim Benjamin, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, we were to create a film but sadly it had to be put on hold because his area went into strict lockdown.
Resa caused me to think about rock music with her questions in our interview, my Mum likes what my Dad calls soft rock and my Dad likes Queen, the Eagles they both like the New Romantics though Soft Cell, Erasure, Kate Bush so those are the songs I grew up listening to, as well as Brittany Spears, Christina, Steps, Spice Girls hehe. I had a lot of catching up to do in the classical world! I read music so I tend to learn music from the score rather than by listening to others, but then sometimes people don’t like your version because they’re used to what they know until they’ve heard it a few times.
Happy New Year to you,
Best wishes Charlotte
Classical musicians have the task of interpreting the music. I remember spending a lot of time in record stores listening to classical albums to find the best interpretation, and recording quality. I’ve never had to do that pop/rock/punk, etc.
Your Tim Benjamin project sounds really cool. I hope you can resume working on a movie at some point.
Hey Tim, how I would love to visit this place. So rugged, yet so much beauty .. and those clouds! Couldn’t agree with you more about Randal .. magic photography and a journey of words
Thanks, Julie. If you ever get out this way, I’ll take you to the badlands.
If I ever do, I’d sure love to go and see them 🙂