France Day 10 Les Baux de Provence

May 22, 2013 Timothy Price2 Comments

Yesterday was a free day, so we did laundry, then our hostess drove us to the TGV station where we got our tickets back to Paris on the 28th and where we picked up a rental car for the rest of the week. After talking to locals and getting recommendations of places to see, Laurie and I decided we needed to rent a car so we could get out in the countryside and really explore the area. So we are still going to the same places as the class, but we are going to do a lot more exploring. After we picked up the car, we drove out to Les Baux de Provence, an old fortified city built on top of a rock at a pass in the hills, which was highly recommended. You can only get there by car or hired tour bus.

Baux is a popular village. There were a lot of people visiting the village, a lot of large groups of bicyclists slowly making their way up the hills into the city, and lots of tour buses. We parked in the village in the valley below Baux and walked up on the the stone stairways that brought us to gate 6. Just below the gate there were areas where buildings had been built into the rock that were now just cutouts in the rock that reminded us of the cliff dwellings at Bandelier National Monument. We were going to go into the old fort that would have given us access to the highest points on the ruins of the old fortification, but two or three groups of about 100 schools kids were going in, so that slowed down the process of getting in, and we had limited time as we had to get back by 6:00 at the latest for cooking class.

There are a lot of shops and restaurants tucked into odd shaped places and on terraces. We ate crepes in the narrow, almost triangular building (photos 7, 8, 9). It was pretty late so we and another person were the only people in the restaurant. The crepes were excellent and while were eating, the waitress and cook where busy bringing things in and taking things out the door. When we left, they had set up an ice-cream machine and slush machines and had a soft drinks available on the street. The weather was cool, but I’m sure when all those kids came back through after touring the fort, she would get a lot of business.

We also stopped and explored some of the vinyards and olive groves along the way, and I got my first French drive-by photo of the shark on the truck — the drives can be quite wild in France, but drivers seem quite wild everywhere. BTW we are driving the VW Up! to the left of the Mini Cooper in the second to the last photo.

France Day 8 Aix Water Bells

May 20, 2013May 19, 2013 Timothy Price7 Comments

We went to the service as St. Jean de Malte this morning. It was a beautiful service with two infant baptisms and other people doing their first communion. The baptisms were different from the Methodist tradition in that the babies were presented naked and immersed in a big copper caldron of water three times and then dressed with little white shirt and either water or oil put on their heads. The choral music was great and the pipe organ was wonderful. We walked around Aix after church, talked to an Australian for a while and then went back to the house where we are staying, and I took a photo of the view from our walk to and from Aix. After we got home, I helped our hostess build a chicken coop, which looks more like a chalet than what we’ve used for chicken coops in the past. Then we went to cooking class in the evening, learned to make quiche, ate it and got home late again. We have to get up early to go to Marseille.

France Day 2 — Paris

May 14, 2013May 13, 2013 Timothy Price4 Comments

Today we went to Notre Dame, Paris City Hall, the Pompidou Center, and a tower commemorating a king as part of class, then Laurie and I went to the Medieval Museum in the afternoon. We were going to go to the Deportation Museum, but it was closed, but then we walked by the bridge over the Seine where lovers put locks on the bridge to seal their love (or something like that). One of the students said his parents had placed a lock on the bridge many years ago — we decided it would be impossible to find it.

I used a super wide-angle lens for the exterior and interior shots today, so the buildings are distorted. But then, you can Google the building and see photos of the buildings closer to the right perspective.

Notre Dame is 850 years old now, and the exterior has been cleaned and the cathedral is free of scaffolding on the exterior. The interior is dark so the stained glass is very luminous. There are a lot of nice gargoyles on Notre Dame, but most are very high and difficult to see well with the naked eye. I have some details of gargoyles on Notre Dame, but the gargoyles I posted today are on the commemorative tower — I had better light at the tower, so the definition is better in those photos.

City hall (not pictured) is a big, recently cleaned building, with a lot of statutes of famous statesmen, artists and people who were involved with the arts and sciences. There had bee some kind of celebration or fiesta over the weekend, as there were work crews taking down tents and amusement rides.

The Pompidou Center is a large, modern building that was very controversial because of it’s raw, skinless, functional structure. The multicolored pipes on the one side of the building are color coded by function — hot water, cold water, HVAC, etc. — and are exposed and color coded throughout the building.

The tower was built by a king for himself and serves no other purpose but as a monument to the king. It has great gargoyles, so I included a statue of St. George flanked by gargoyles and then a detail of St George and one of the gargoyles. The second detail shows how expressive the gargoyles are. Professor Janetta Rebold Benton, in her talk on gargoyles in April, said the gargles were made for God, because they are so high and hard to see. Fortunately we have telephoto lenses today that let’s us see want my have very well been for God’s eyes only.

The Medieval Museum was fantastic, but we didn’t have time to really look at everything. We will go back to it when we return to Paris in June. There a lot of groups of school children in the museum listening to lectures on the art, running around and finding pieces on their worksheet, and drawing some of the artifacts on display. The last photo shows a class in the room with swords, shields and other accouterments of chivalry.

Laurie has a little magnifying glass on the compass, so we were looking at some of the illuminated manuscripts with the magnifying glass. Tiny details about the size of a pin head have amazing detail of faces with expression and realistic looking flowers, and lines no thicker than fine hair are perfectly drawn. I can only imagine that the artists used some type of magnifying glass to do the work, or they had amazingly good vision.

Easter Sunday in B&W

April 1, 2013 Timothy Price7 Comments

The Easter Services at CUMC were beautiful, with the young people acting out the resurrection narrative, a live bunny at the children’s sermon, fantastic music by the Chancel Choir and a wonderful Sermon by Reverend Scott Sharp.

Great Getting

March 31, 2013April 1, 2013 Timothy Price8 Comments

The “Great Getting’ Up Mournin’ celebration” with the CUMC Chancel Choir and Fellowship Baptist Unity Choir was fantastic. Jazz a la Carte played Dixieland Jazz before the service, between sets and after the service, and they were very enternaining. Pastor Scott Sharp (CUMC) and Pastor Dennis Dunn (FBUC) both delivered short, but inspiring sermons. The music, choirs, musicians and congregation were very lively. It was a great service and moving experience.

I’ve been looking for a second full-frame Canon body, but new Canon full frame bodies are expensive, so I started looking at used bodies. I saw a Canon 1Ds advertised on Amazon as “Like New, little use” for $650 with no other description. I emailed the seller and asked what it came with and the shutter count. Canon 1D bodies are the hard core professional bodies that start new for $6000 and run up to over $8000 depending on the model. Normally used 1D bodies with low shutter counts are priced higher than 5D and new 6D. 1D bodies in the $600 range usually have very high shutter counts (80,000+), and are normally very well used.

The seller emailed back and said the camera came with all the original accessories, in the original box, and that the shutter count was 1846. My 5d that is only a year old is ready to turn over 20,000 clicks on the shutter. I ordered the camera and it arrived on Friday, and it is really “like new”, so it was “great getting” on my part.

All the photos, except for the photos I took of the camera sitting among Laurie’s cookies, were taken with the 1Ds. The sky was overcast and very bright when I took the outdoor photos, so it was a good challenge for the metering system. The auto focus is fast and accurate and it focused on black (Rosencrantz) immediately without searching like the 5D. The shutter is much quieter than the 5D and is super quick and responsive. All the photos are how they came straight out of the camera with little manipulation (of course, the panorama of the sanctuary was stitched together). The service tonight was a good test for indoors, under low light. While it focuses in the shadows very well, I discovered the autofocus searches on bright white, so it’s not perfect.

I got a photo of the first butterfly of the season, and it looked pretty ragged, so it either wintered over locally or migrated. One of the peach trees is blooming, as are the wild plums, and the honey bees are enjoying them.

After the service, we gathered in the ‘Life Center” for fellowship and cookies. The couple in the last photo asked me to take their picture. They are a handsome couple, and my first portrait with the 1Ds. I put on the super-wide angle lens and got a photo of the trombonist in the jazz band with his “le long trombone!”

HoneyBeeBlossom

Blue Flame and Candy

March 15, 2013 Timothy Price5 Comments

A couple of Harleys parked downtown and The Fusion Factory.

Holy Moses

March 11, 2013March 11, 2013 Timothy Price2 Comments

I had my day all planned out — go to the second service, get material on the way home to finish the door, do more watering, herd cats — or so I thought. After the service, which had a wonderful liturgical dance to “Moses”, Jerri asked me if I had gone to their concert at Keller Hall last night and photographed it — I hadn’t, so she asked me if I could photograph the concert this afternoon. The concert was great. A mixed Choir, with the Symphony Orchestra of Albuquerque, performed the Easter selections from Handel’s Messiah, then the SOA played Brahms’ “Academic Festival Overture” and Camille Saint-Saens’ “Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor,” with Natalia Tikhovidova on piano. Ms Tikhovidova is a phenomenal pianist and the “Piano Concerto…” was very lively and showy. The SOA and choirs will do another performance on March 17, 2013, 2:00 pm at John XXIII Catholic Community, 4831 Tramway Ridge, NE.

I started out the photo session standing with the choir in the beginning of the concert, so I got a super-wide angle photo from the choir’s/orchestra’s point-of-view, with the audience in the pews. The percussionists were fun to watch because they followed their music with such intensity — there were times they played only one or two notes, so they obviously didn’t want to miss them.

Although I had to lay aside my well-laid plans for the day, the concert was well worth it.

666 Route 66

March 8, 2013 Timothy Price13 Comments

Today is my 666th consecutive post since I moved to Word Press. The number 666 is dear to me because I woman once called me the Antichrist in a public meeting (I really, really made her mad). Later I used the same formula that Boris used in Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” to add up the numbers that corresponded to the letters in his name to see what they added up to, which turned out to be 666, making him think he was the Antichrist. Guess what? The numeric values of my full name also added up to 666. But it’s all for fun, as Nero was thought to be the Antichrist referred to in the Book of Revelations, and apparently, the Mark of the Beast could be 606 or 616, so all the superstition about 666 may all be for naught. The State of NM changed NM Highway 666 between Gallup and Shiprock to US Highway 491 a few years ago so they wouldn’t be mixing church and state.

So when Bruce and I were discussing what I should do for photos for this special post, he gave me the idea to google 666 Route 66. There are were actually four choices between SW, NW, SE and NE depending on which side on Central Avenue your on, east or west of the railroad tracks. East of the tracks was a hotel or the building the Baptist Convention used to be in. West of the tracks is El Rey Theater and a parking lot. If the Baptist Convention was still at 666 Route 66, that building would have been the photo of the day, but it’s a boring building and I have no history with it. So the El Rey got it. I go way back with the El Rey. When I was a kid I went to movies there, and about 20 years ago we went to see a band friend liked — the band sucked but our friend was entertaining. Around the same time, we went to a couple of salsa dances, performed flamenco, and we went to concert by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones at the El Rey. Bela Fleck was fantastic and he changed my opinion of the banjo forever. I still get mail from the Flecktones every now and then.

At lunchtime Bruce and I walked over to the El Rey Theater and he posed for me on the spot that would be 666 Route 66 SW. I used a super-wide angle lens, which made Bruce look a little like the Terminator, which was perfect. The we went around behind the building to find the back wall colorfully painted with an outline of the Virgin de Guadalupe on a back door — super! Then we photographed our way back to the office through the well painted and graffitied alleys.

Another Day, Another Rose

February 11, 2013 Timothy Price3 Comments

I know there is a bit of “déjà vu all over again” in today’s spread, but the roses were speaking to me, and another super-wide photo of the cleared property with a bare cottonwood and a stormy sky was too much to resist. The late afternoon sun shining through the bird’s coleus created interesting patterns, as well.

Gathering

February 8, 2013 Timothy Price4 Comments

I met the artist working on the installation a 2nd and Gold this morning. The installation is Jane Gordon’s MFA Thesis Exhibit called “Gathering.” She describes it as a “Site-based art installation in a public space.” She uses a variety of materials and processes “to explore a personal, historic, and forward-looking narrative of labor, struggle, survival, and hope in a time of ecological and social uncertainty.” The exhibit will be officially open from February 9 — March 30, and there is an opening reception on Saturday, February 9 from 3pm to 6pm.