After fording the shallows of the west fork of the Rio Grande to one of the large sandbars in the middle of the river, I was faced with a forest of salt cedar interspersed with thorny Russian Olive Trees as I bushwhacked my way across the sandbar to see what was happening along the wider, deeper water running on the east side of the sandbar. Figuring they were hidden from the shutters and eyes of humans they commonly see along the accessible areas to the river, the Sandhill Cranes were playing games, drag racing to be more specific, very much like what you might see in an old Far Side comic.

As I emerged from the orange-yellow briar patch, a couple of Sandhill Cranes took off in a race down the river, while another pair quivered behind the barbed wire starting line ready to start their drag race down the river. I was able to catch the second pair on film and narrate the action in each of the photos below.

Spiky thorns on Russian Olive branches that grabbed and tore at my clothes as a made my way across the overgrown sandbar.

Quick Silver in front and Light Speed in back at the barbed wire starting line.

They are off with Quick Silver getting the jump and Light Speed.

IMG_3406-2 — Quick Silver opens a up a gap

Light Speed kicks it in the turbo and goes into warp speed

Light Speed catches Quick Silver and they are neck and neck

Light Speed surges past Quick Silver to take the lead

The race ended when they caught the two cranes that started their race as I came out of the thicket.

Sunset in Purple

January 19, 2015 Timothy Price41 Comments

Purple clouds at dusk looking northeast.

I walked a mile and a half south of the house and got the sunset looking northeast, east and south while standing in the middle of the Rio Grande. Besides the normal shades of yellows, pinks and blues, the interesting shaped clouds to the north turned purple.

SandiasSunset1-18-15 — Pink Sandias, looking east

SunsetSouth1-18-15 — Sunset looking directly south

Crows flying into the layers of the sunset looking directly south

The Cine Experiment

January 13, 2015January 28, 2015 Timothy Price21 Comments

0219pri-R1-E024 — The last frame #24 on the roll of film affected by light leaks in the film canister.

I bought some Cine Film re-engineered for 35mm to be developed by standard C41 process. This is a high speed tungsten film normally used for cinematography. I had put the roll of film in my Canon F1 intending to shoot film along with digital of the fashion show at Gears & Glamour. However, since the fashion show was in the dark, and I hadn’t worked with the film before, I didn’t want to push it beyond its recommended ISO 800 until I had used it. Since this film is best used indoors or at night under tungsten street lighting, I only took a few shots in the well lighted prep area at Gears & Glamour, a few more at the West Side Chorale’s winter concert, and then decided to use it outdoors with a 600 mm lens. I knew the color would be off in daylight, but I wanted to see how well I could hand hold a 600 mm lens with high speed film.

I got a surprise when I got to the end of the roll of film. I noticed the advance didn’t stop, and when I tried rewinding the film, the knob turned freely. I advanced the film a couple more times to see it would stop — it didn’t, so I took the camera into the darkroom, opened it in the dark and carefully felt by the take-up spool, and discovered the film had not been secured to the spool in the canister. I took out the canister, and as carefully as I could opened it up with a can opener. I carefully pulled the film out of the camera, but when the last of it popped off the take-up spool, the coiled mess of film slipped from my hands and fell to the floor. Remember, I’m in total darkness, so I bent down, felt around at my feet, found the pile of film, gently picked it up, found an end to the film, found the spool from the canister and rewound the film back onto the spool. I put the spool back in the canister and forced the end cap back onto the canister. When I got the negatives back, the canister didn’t seal back up tightly around the edges after opening it (I had suspected as much), so the last frames on the roll had light leaks. This was a mystery, because the last frames should be on the inside of the spool and the first frames on the outside where they would be affected by light leaks in the seal around the outer edge of the end cap. Then I remembered dropping the film, so I must have rolled it back on the spool reverse of how the photos were taken.

The lead photo is frame 24, the last image taken, and the effect of the light leaks from being on the outer edge in the canister are pretty interesting. The rest of the images, shown in order taken, were not affected by the leaks on the edge of the canister.