Yesterday Laurie and I with Susan and Lois took an excursion down south of Albuquerque to look for Sandhill Cranes for our birthdays. After photographing cranes we headed east behind the Manzanos where we visited two of the Salinas Pueblo Missions, Abó and Quarai, and then continued north, around the mountains, and back to Albuquerque. Along the way we photographed landscapes, saw several trains, and had an interesting, uniquely New Mexico, encounter with a local couple along the way.
I went out to see if there was water in the irrigation ditch. There was no water in it, but while I was out, I walked over to the clearwater ditch that runs between the irrigation ditch and the river. While I was checking out the dragonflies and other critters hanging out by the water, a bullfrog popped up to see what I was doing. He was very charming.
This America rose has faded to a nice pink over the past two weeks. The large bud opened and has been well preserved as turned from salmon to pink, but the three buds accompanying the rose have shown very little growth or progress toward opening. Between the very cool nights and shortened days, I’m not sure there is enough warmth or light left in a day for them to fully open.
Spunk got hold of a roll of paper towels and proceeded to create kitty art with it — a combination of performance art and “realtime” sculpture. Tristan called in the afternoon and asked if I was going to photograph the partial eclipse of the sun. I didn’t have neutral density filters with me, so I poked a pinhole in a business card and had Bruce focus the eclipse on a sheet of paper while I photographed it (last two photos). I used neutral density filters to photograph the full eclipse of the sun in May 2012 and the Transit of Venus in June 2012.
Keeping up with coffee trends, I’m introducing Blond Cucaracha Crunch Coffee just in time for Halloween. Those of you who have followed my blog for awhile might recall that I discovered Cucaracha Crunch Coffee back in 2012 when a cockroach crawled into my coffee cup at the office. During this All Hollows season when people try to be gross and disgusting, what better way to gross out your friends, family and colleagues than with a big, bold, blond cup of Cucaracha Crunch Coffee — Blond?
Even though there was no water to irrigate after going out at 2:30 AM, I got a photo of an interesting spiderweb, and my first panorama of the night sky.
I took a walk out to the river at sunset to see if the cranes or other birds were flying in to roost for the night. No cranes, but the glow after sunset was really beautiful.
On the evening of the last Saturday of the Balloon Fiesta, we walked out to the river and watched the fireworks show set off at the balloon field on the opposite bank of the Rio Grande. All the photos were taken using a Canon 1Ds with a 70-200mm L lens, zoomed to 200mm, ƒ/4, 1/60 sec at ISO 100, hand held.
One last cosmos was hanging on among the dried ends of cosmos stems and brown, hardened sunflower stalks. A green butterfly landed in the mulch to warm itself in the sun before flying off to forage for what little flowers remained. I was going to start pulling up the dead sunflowers, but the finches and sparrows were still feeding on them, so they will remain standing awhile longer.
Off Center & Not Even 