It’s not the first time I’ve been banned for life because of my photographic endeavors, but yesterday’s ban was more surprising than when I was banned for life for photographing the Sandias from the edge of an Indian Pueblo. While the Pueblo’s police officer did not argue the fact that I was not on pueblo land, he had a problem with me photographing the Sandias, which he said is sacred property that belonged to the Pueblo. So he wrote me up for photographing the Sandias from the edge of the pueblo, and told me I was banned from the pueblo for life.

As anyone who has followed my blogs for awhile knows that I have been documenting the construction of the Imperial Building going up behind our office over the past year from the parking garage on 2nd Street. While city security staff has seen me on the garage taking photos of the construction many times over the past year, none of them have ever taken any notice, and said nothing more to me than “Hi!” when we were in earshot of each other. Yesterday, however, a security officer drove up and told me that I was not supposed to be on the parking structure, ordered me to leave, and told me to never come back. I asked her about people who parked in the garage, and she said anyone parking in the garage is supposed to walk to and from their cars, and are not allowed to walk anywhere else in the parking garage. Okay! I left, and shook the dust of my shoes as I walked out of the garage.

I understand that the City doesn’t want people wondering around in the parking garage breaking into cars, but I’m obviously not breaking into cars. Since the Imperial Building is almost done, it probably doesn’t really matter if I don’t do anymore photos of it from the parking garage, but I would like to finish the project from the same vantage points. I emailed Mayor Berry and asked if his office would give me a letter granting me access to the parking garage so I can finish documenting the Imperial Building to its completion.

I also went back through my photo archives and created a new animated gif of the construction over the past year. I had missed a couple of weeks of progress, which I overlooked trying to get the first gif completed so I could post the gif on the one year anniversary of ground breaking on the project. So the new animated gif is more complete and all the images fit better than the first animated gif. You can see the new gif on the post from January 13, 2016 at https://photoofthedayetc.wordpress.com/2016/01/13/the-ends-in-sight-a-year-after-a-ground-breaking-experience/