We got our first snow of 2014. Even in color, the snow on the black bamboo makes a B&W photo. My B&W panorama of the Sandias taken through the windshield while driving on Alameda is “not even”, and the last photo is looking west at the volcanos from Lomas and I-25.
Work continues on the catio. We started preparing the old cement slab for resurfacing on Saturday, but then we discovered we needed to rent a high pressure sprayer to clean it before we put on the resurfacing cement, plus the temperatures are supposed to stay above 50º F for 8 hours after the new surface is applied. Since the temperature only got into the 40’s over the weekend we decided to prepare surfaces for painting.
The first photo is Laurie preparing to wire brush the French windows so I could paint them. In the second photo, she is telling Rosencrantz and Guildenstern what they could do to help. The third photo shows Guildenstern supervising Laurie. He had a lot to say about our work, so much so, that it wore him out and he had to take a break (fourth photo). The French windows and door had not been painted in 22 years. The ivy had grown up on them which marked and pulled off paint in various places, so I spent a good part of the day painting the windows and doors with a very good, “stain killer” primer. The last photo shows Laurie standing by the freshly primed windows.
As I have mentioned before, we live in a cold spot — the reason Laurie was dressed in layers of warm clothes to work on the catio. We went to a dinner party last night in Albuquerque. When we left the party at a little after 10:00 PM, the car showed the outside temperature was 47º F. When we got home 20 minutes later, the temperature at our house was 26º F. We live about 10 miles north and west as the crow flies, and about 700 feet lower than the part of Albuquerque we attended the dinner party, yet we were 21degrees colder.
The sky was overcast and gray all day for solstice, which reminded me of Paris. Looking through my photos taken from a riverboat on our last day in Paris back in June, I noticed that there was lots of love along the Seine despite the gray sky and rain.
Those specs that look like I could have a very dirty sensor are actually birds flying over downtown Albuquerque with the sunset lighting up the Manzanos in the background.
I ran out to get the mail this afternoon, which would normally take about 15 minutes, but I got distracted by the light, drove up to the north end of Corrales, and got back with the mail about an hour and a half after I left.
Snow, snowmen, and wintery landscapes at sunset.
When I saw the old Audio Express building that is being remodeled into some kind of restaurant all wrapped up in plastic, I thought of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who are well known for wrapping islands, trees, rivers and creating other large wrapped environmental installations. We heard Christo speak many years ago when we were art students. I don’t remember much of what his talk was on, but I’ve always been impressed with his work. The construction workers created a nice piece of art, wrapping the building out of necessity to keep the fresh plaster from freezing. They didn’t understand what I saw in the plastic wrapped building that was worth photographing.
On the other side of the parking lot, the strings of red chiles and surroundings had a “wrapped” look of their own through my telephoto lens.
Winter is upon us with cold temperatures, snow flurries, cloudy skies and gray light. The Sandias have been covered with clouds most of the day, and even with the thermostat set at 70 F (21 C), it felt cold in the house all day without the sun shinning through the windows.
The blogger one man and his mustang – ’66 restoration project mentioned that he had the first frost last night, which prompted me to comment that we had been getting frost almost every night since the 3rd week in September. I also mentioned that we have several project cars. He replied that he would like to see photos of our project cars. I remembered I had done some on a frosty morning about 3 years ago, but when I found them, all I got of nearly complete cars in the frost were front views of the ’66 VW and the 1980 280 ZX (Tristan and David have the 280 ZX pretty well restored now). I only got parts of the ’76 Sun Bug and the 1960 Rambler in the frosty morning shoot, so the photo with Tiffany leaning on the hood of the Sun Bug shows the best shot I have of back of the Rambler behind her, besides the closeup of the trunk handle in the lead photo. The only photo of the Sun Bug in toto that I could find is one done by Susan Graham when we were having the houses torn down, that she has on her blog for her Photography Master Cup Nominations on February 19th of this year.
When we left Paris yesterday morning it was cloudy and 60º F, when when we touched down in Albuquerque it was sunny and 100º F — from cold and wet to hot and dry. Soon after take-off from Paris we above the clouds and it stayed cloudy until a break in the clouds over Hudson bay showed ice breaking up, and then we flew over the area of the bay that looks like land cracked with water, and it was covered with snow and ice. Then we had mostly cloud cover again until we were almost to Salt Lake City. From SLC to Albuquerque the sky had some high clouds but there was a lot of haze in the air from the fires.
Off Center & Not Even 