Despite hard frost every night for the past two weeks, the hollyhocks have been hanging in and putting on new blooms. On the other hand, Wagner’s corn is making its last stand — the leaves are showing signs of frost bite. The corn stalks will get plowed under in the next few weeks, which will make the cranes and geese happy to have a freshly plowed field to forage.
While out photographing old adobes, I came across some old crates and old wire that made interesting shapes.
On their way home from our birthday gathering last night, Laurie’s parents left me a message that the moon looked really good. I went outside to check it out, but I couldn’t see the moon because of the trees. I got up on the roof, but the moon was low so the trees still blocked it. So I ran back inside, got Laurie, and we drove up to the top of the road just before the sleepy moon slipped below another tree line. The birthday dinner was perfect, the cake was heavenly, and the moon added I nice surreal touch to the end of a great evening.
We dropped by Laurie’s brother’s new house on the way home from the weekly rehearsal for Handel’s Messiah, and a roadrunner was in the yard foraging for insects or whatever it could find to eat. I got a couple of orchids for my birthday that replaced the dried peonies that had hovered over my computer all summer and into the fall. They were making their last stand on the railing of the front porch before going into the compost.
October is the birthday month for our family. Laurie made a chocolate honey ganache layer cake to celebrate Tristan’s and my birthday. It has mild honey, coffee and rum. She made the cake a couple of days ahead so the flavors can “develop,” as the recipe puts it. On Thursday evening when I got home the house smelled wonderful. After we eat bistro beef for dinner, we will get to try the cake.
I did a photo shoot for a handsome young couple’s engagement tonight on the river at the north end of Corrales. While I was waiting for the couple to arrive, another young couple skipping rocks on the river volunteered to pose for me so I could get my exposure and fill flash adjusted. On my way home, I stopped and got a photo of the fire on the Sandias at dusk.
Remember the Marlboro Man? He traded in his horse for a Harley. I got a couple of new flash units today, and was messing around with photographing the sliver moon and flashing the trees in front of it. The trees were about 75 feet from the camera so the flash barely lighted them, but it was enough. I think I got the last web of the season in the third photo.
One advantage of the dryness in the Southwest are old cars don’t rust away.
Puck was out helping me irrigate this morning before sunrise, casually going into warp drive as he flitted here and there in the sub-freezing temperatures. The few times I saw as much more than a blur, he was in a strategic location, behind a grassy knoll, for example, surveying the surroundings, ready to pounce or slip back into warp drive, whichever served him best.
The first photo is of the Sandias 30 minutes after the sunset. I love how the highlights glow from the camera compensating for the low light. The second photo is a hand-stitched panorama of the the rapids on the Rio Grande at the north end of Corrales. I hadn’t intended on making a panorama out of the two photos so the panorama program could deal with it. The two images were close enough for me to fudge the edges and splice them together. The last photo is of Professor Pierre Cartier (IHES, France) lecturing on “Mathematics in the 21st Century” this afternoon at UNM. The write-up on him reads “Professor Cartier is one of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century, a former member of the legendary mathematical group Bourbaki, and the originator of a number of ground breaking ideas in mathematics and theoretical physics.” He was very entertaining and paced the floor as he spoke in general, stopping to face the audience to make his points, which made him even more interesting and endearing. I put several photos together to capture his wonderful lecture style.
The first photo shows why the Sandias are the Sandias. I had an interesting day. I accompanied a trio in two services and then played for the outdoor service at 1:00. I have just started playing again after not touching my guitar for over three years and I have not performed in public for almost 10 years. Playing feels strange with numb finger tips, but I haven’t had to go through the pain on raw fingers until they build up calluses. My finger tips are a bit raw from practicing, I just don’t really feel them.
Susan came out for her annual “end of the San Ysidro Church Art Show” visit and trek to the bosque to photograph the Sandias. Although, this year we went out to photograph some of the abandoned adobe houses in Corrales, and then headed north to photograph the Sandias from a different point of view. We got photos of some cranes grazing, playing and fighting in a field along the way, and a hawk just happened to fly by. Just after the sun fell below the horizon, we drove up on the bank of the drainage ditch that runs along the southern edge of the River’s Edge subdivision in Rio Rancho and got the Sandias in their full pink. Another photographer set up his view camera next to us, and then Dennis Chamberlain, who Susan knows, came walking back to his car, tripod over his shoulder in the dusk. So we all talked photography until after dark. Dennis is a fantastic photographer. I recommend checking out his magnificent photos at http://www.dcphotoartistry.com/DC_Photo_Artistry/Welcome.html.
Off Center & Not Even 