El Dia de los Muertos

We went to a live performance of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” last night (wonderful performance), then went to the Frontier Restaurant to eat and visit afterward, so we didn’t get home until almost midnight. Laurie reminded me that we set the clocks back an hour, so I set all our analog clocks to 11:20 thinking we were almost ready for bed. However, by the time I remember I needed to go outside and turn off the water to the drip system, did a kitty count, messed around on the computer some more, and finally herded the cats to the bedroom it was 12:20 again — I ended up staying up past midnight twice last night.

We went to the Marigold Parade and Festival as part of El Dia de los Muertos after choir practice this afternoon. The Marigold Parade was great fun and people from the various cultures in the Albuquerque area participated and showed off their creativity.

Pass the Hat

October is the birthday month for our family. We celebrated Laurie’s and her mom’s birthdays tonight, out on the the deck. Even though I had the outdoor heater running, it still got cold enough to pull out the jackets, fleece blankets and the hats. The nights have been cool enough for the vines to turn red and the cottonwoods to turn yellow. The long photo is of a volunteer cottonwood that came in with the ditch water, which is only about 8 years old. The fifth photo gives you one of our views of the layers of cottonwoods that we see from the house. A bee flew into the Zipper Spider’s web and the spider pounced on it and wrapped it in silk in seconds. The last two photos show the Zipper with her bee right after she wrapped in up and her in action fixing her web after the capturing the bee. She let it dangle on a strand of silk while she worked on her web, and then ate it for breakfast.

Beauties and Beasts

We went to the 24th Old Church Fine Arts Show at the Old San Ysidro Church in Corrales this afternoon. The show runs through October 14th, but our good friend and fellow photographer, Susan,  has a wonderful photo of a lily in the show, so we went to the opening. While looking at the paintings and photos, we got on the subject of manipulating photographs. There are many purists who think you should use photos how ever they come out of the camera. I’m of the opinion that if it calls for manipulation, manipulate the heck out of it!  The post processing is where a lot of the art comes into photography, especially digital photography, with all the great software that’s available. One can argue that it has more to do with a person skill at using the software — but I say that’s part of the art. After spending years in the darkroom, manipulating images with chemicals and dies, dodging, burning and using exotic films and papers to get various effects, I view the digital darkroom as much safer, more environmentally friendly avenue for manipulating images, and a whole lot more fun. So to celebrate the art of manipulating photos, I manipulated some of the photos I took of some of the beauties and beasts I encountered downtown on my way to and from the Man’s Hat Shop at lunchtime today.