Interesting find in downtown Albuquerque.
Author: Timothy Price
I specialize in daily art, documentary and promotional photography. If you have a special event such as a musical production, play, concert, etc. or have a product or fashion that you need photographed, or you are a performer, musician and artist in need of promotional photos please email me or call.
Kitty Pole-Dancing
Mama Manx was sitting on the top of a 10 foot pole this morning. The moment I started photographing her she began stretching and rubbing around on the pole, performing her kitty version of pole dancing for my camera.
Epiphany
On the 12th day of Christmas we made Spanish Chocolate, almond biscotti, and Spanish tortillas, put out queso Manchego, got lots of flowers, and then we partied like it was 1699. People brought wine, guacamole, chips, pastries, cheese balls and bread and we had a great celebration of Reyes / Epiphany. We made about 2 gallons of Spanish Chocolate and we ate almost all of it. Now that’s what I call the good life!
Opening Night
We went to the opening night of The Wedding Singer directed and choreographed by Devon Frieder. The show was fantastic, and I would encourage anyone living in the greater Albuquerque area to go and see it. The show dates and times, ticket prices and the location are available on my Happy New Year post.
The show is at the Musical Theatre Southwest Black Box Performance Space, which is a small, intimate theater where the performance space is larger than the space allocated for seating (about 100 seats), which gives the allusion that the number of performers are about equal to the audience members. When the full cast is on stage dancing and singing the intimacy, activity, variety of colors and the performers expressions are so exciting that it all becomes almost overwhelming trying to decide who to watch — you can’t take it all in at once like you can in a larger theater.
The story is about Robbie Hart, a singer/song writer, who plays for weddings with his friends Sammy and George. Julia Sullivan is a waitress who becomes engaged to a successful broker, Glen Guglia, but she and Robbie fall in love and everything seems to go wrong for them becoming a couple.
The music and choreography are fun and were delightful to listen to and watch. The comic lines are delivered flawlessly, and the acting was superb. Most of the cast play multiple characters and they play them well. They wouldn’t have had to name the stars and famous people they portrayed, as even I, the no TV, cultural misfit that I am, recognized all of them. Although I don’t usually care much for musicals, I throughly enjoyed the performance, was taken in by the story and characters, and I even fell for the romance and wanted to see Robbie and Julia get together and be happy in the end.
Fogged Up
When I came into the warm house after being out in sub-freezing temperatures, the lens on my camera fogged up, giving me the perfect fog effect on Guildenstern laying on my equipment bags. After the lens cleared up, I got a photo of Guildernstern trying to camouflage himself on the bags, but his yellow eyes and white whisker gave him away. Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Diné rang in the New Year all snuggled up on the bed.
Quadrantids Meteor Shower Fail
I got out my big tripod, got all bundled up, put on my 17-40mm super-wide angle lens, snapped a self portrait, and headed out into the sub-freezing temperatures to attempt to photograph the Quadrantids Meteor Shower last night starting at 9:30 pm, thinking I could get photos in the darkness before the moon came up at 11:00 pm. But when I got outside, I discovered there was a light cloud cover reflecting a lot of light off the city from the south, southeast. I followed the suggestions about how to photograph meteor showers on Spacedex.com’s Meteor Shower Guides, but it looks like I failed to capture anything but stars, planets and clouds. After an hour making exposures from different angles, I got pretty cold and went back inside. I woke up at 2:15 am, bundled up in the dark and went out the front door and tried some exposures from the front porch. The moon, at 65% full, was up to about 10 o’clock in the southeastern sky, so I made my exposures looking west and north. I got a nice shot of the Dig Dipper in the northern skies at 2:30 am, but again failed to get anything that looked like a meteors.
Daddy Longlegs
I’ve been so busy photographing birds, mountains, and shows that I’ve neglected the spiders. A daddy longlegs was hanging out being a willing subject when I got home tonight.
Of Crows and Cranes
I went out to the river late this afternoon to see what birds were out — the crows were swarming, the cranes were coming in for the night, and the geese were standing around watching the action. There was a hawk flying along the east side of the river when the crows flew in and several of the crows started chasing it, and a crows vs. hawk dog fight ensued. I attempted to photograph the battle, but they were too high and too far away to get clear shots of it.
Happy New Year
2012 ended with a beautiful sunset. Laurie walked by the window and said “Oh! The base of the Sandias are on fire!” I grabbed my camera and made the 1/4 mile dash to the river bank just in time to get the red as it faded with the last sunlight of 2012. As I walked out of the bosque, the last sunset of 2012 was quite dramatic, as was the morning light offering beauty and promise for 2013.
I start the new year with my 600th consecutive post on WordPress, and 908th consecutive post since I started on CaringBridge in July of 2010. According to WordPress’s annual report, I had over 10,000 views in 2012 from people in 83 countries, — the US, the Netherlands, the UK, Canada and Russia were the top five. Thank you all for a great 2012 and I look forward to an even better 2013.
One of the first things you can put on your calendars for 2013 is the musical comedy, The Wedding Singer, presented by Devon Frieder and Warehouse 21 Productions. It starts this Friday, January 4th, and will run for two consecutive weekends. The show is directed and choreographed by Devon Frieder, with musical direction by Erik Joshua Clack. The Wedding Singer is based on the book by Chad Beguelin and Tim Herlihy with music and lyrics by Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin.
The shows will be presented at the Musical Theatre Southwest Black Box Performance Space, 6320 Domingo Rd. NE Ste. B, Albuquerque, NM 87108 (Central & San Pedro by the Fairgrounds). Show dates and times are:
Friday, January 4 at 7pm
Saturday, January 5 at 2pm & 7pm
Sunday, January 6 at 4pm
Friday, January 11 at 7pm
Saturday, January 12 at 2pm & 7pm Sunday,
January 13 at 4pm
Admission: $15 Adults, $12 Students. Special Front Row VIP Seats for $25.
To Reserve Tickets in Advance, Call (505)-216-6014
The last five photos are from a promotional photo shoot I did for the show last week, and Three Guys and a Guitar I posted on December 28, 2012 was one of the photos from the session. From the 10 minutes of rehearsal I saw before the shoot, and my interactions with Devon and the cast, The Wedding Singer looks like it will be a fun-filled production with lots of music and dance, and a friendly cast of whacky, colorful characters.
Hawk Flight
As we were driving home this afternoon at about 3:30 pm, I noticed a very large bird sitting in the top of a tree in the middle of a field. I made the left onto the ditch bank and drove back to where I got a clear view of the hawk about 500 yards away. I had my camera with the 70-200mm zoom lens in my bag in the back of the car, so I quietly opened the rear hatch, got out my camera, and got one shot of the bird looking at me before it took off. It flew off quickly and the sequence of shots was as fast as the camera would focus and shoot on the flying hawk in overcast light. The last photo is a panorama of all seven frames I got of the hawk before my autofocus couldn’t distinguish the bird any longer. I added an effect to the 4th photo in the series which is supposed to mimic a gum bromine print. The photo ended up with a softer focus than the other images and the effect brought the most detail out of the softness, and it ended up looking somewhat like a pastel drawing.
Off Center & Not Even 