Posts in Category: New Mexico
Steller’s Jay
Steller’s Jay. Santa Fe Canyon Preserve
What with one thing and another, we have not had a bird in a while here at Pic for Today 🙂 When we visited Santa Fe Canyon Nature Conservancy Preserve earlier in the week, all the jays. and there were quite a few, were Pinion. We went back yesterday for a short hike after a day a the museums, and I was surprised to find that all the jays were Steller’s. It was a rainy day, and quite cold compared to earlier in the week, so I suppose that might have brought the Steller’s Jays down to lower elevation (and driven the Pinion Jays still lower). Steller’s Jay is a handsome bird, and even the damp cold day and dim light could not diminish it.
Sony HX400V at 2400mm (1200 optical plus 2x Clear Image Zoom). 1/320th @ ISO 80 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Kasha-Katuwe Pano Panel
Three panoramas from Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks, NM
The fast sensors and processors in today’s digital cameras make panoramas both easy and fun. There is no need to take overlapping frames or to align and blend them after the fact. You simply sweep the camera smoothly across the landscape and the panorama is recorded as one long strip. And I love being able to capture the sweep of the landscape. I generally hold the camera vertically, so the pano is not as wide as it would be otherwise, but it makes for a more natural perspective.
However, I have never figured out what to do with the panoramas once I have captured them. Display on a standard computer or laptop monitor, no matter how large, simply does not do them justice…and you would need a very large open wall to display a print…even if you could make one. This panel of three panoramas is somewhat of a compromise. I like the amount of detail captured and it still maintains the feeling of sweep, while being, somehow, easier on the eye than the individual shots. Or that is what I think.
All three are from our visit to Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument near the Cochiti Pueblo in New Mexico.
Sony WX220 pocket camera. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Phototastic Pro on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks
Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument
Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument between Albuquerque and Santa Fe New Mexico is one of the newer NMs…designated and opened in 2001. Kasha-Katuwe means white cliffs in Keresan, the traditional language of the Cochiti Pueblo, who are partners with the Bureau of Land Management in protecting and developing the area. The cliffs are adorned with many hoodoos…conical formations weathered out of the volcanic tuff…and heavily banded with magenta layers. All in all it is a very impressive landscape. Carol and Anna climbed the Slot Canyon Trail to the top of the cliffs for a panoramic view, while I worked along the base of the cliffs on the Cave Trail, taking many panorama shots to try to capture something of the effect of the cliffs. To view this for full impact, you need to click on it and open it full screen.
I was experimenting with the little (tiny) Sony WX 220’s panorama and HDR functions. This is a simple sweep panorama with the camera held vertically. Processed in Lightroom.
Anna in the Cavate
Anna at Bandelier National Mounment, NM
Though Carol and I lived in New Mexico for 12 years, Anna, our third daughter, was only 2 when we moved to Maine, so she has no memory of place…or should not! Yet she says she felt like “coming home” when she got to Santa Fe a few months ago. I told her she might have some buried memories, but, in fact, I felt the same why when I first got to New Mexico, and I was born in upstate New York. It is something in the landscape that speaks to certain souls (and equally, does not speak to others). Anyway, we took Anna to Bandelier National Monument for her first visit yesterday, and returned for our first in well over 25 years. It is such a great place! Anna had climbed into one of the cavates (improved pockets in the tuff stone, used as dwellings, for storage, or for ceremonial purposes). Who could resist?
Sony HX400V in-camera HDR. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Mourning Cloak
Mourning Cloak, Bear Canyon, Randell Davies Audubon Sanctuary, Santa Fe NM
Carol and I did some hiking yesterday morning while waiting for Anna to get out of work. We hiked the trail at Santa Fe Canyon Preserve (Nature Conservancy) and then the trail at the Randell Davies Audubon Sanctuary. It was a wonderful morning with good birds, wonderful scenery, and some interesting history of the Santa Fe watershed. At Randell Davies we took the short extension up Bear Canyon. I don’t know what I expected, but I certainly was not expecting butterflies on this brisk March morning with patches of snow still on the trail in the mountains of Santa Fe. Yet, as we reached the end of the maintained trail in Bear Canyon, high up among the Ponderosa Pines, a Western Tiger Swallowtail came up off the ground by the stream and went high into the trees (as they will do). Then, a few yards beyond, a Mourning Cloak (the one in the pic) came floating down above the stream. It eventually landed so I could get some shots. Finally, either a Comma or a Question Mark (I did not get a shot of the closed wings so I can not say which it was) followed the same route down the stream. We saw the same, or additional, Mourning Cloaks further down the main trail. Butterflies!
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. 1/320th @ ISO 125 @ f6.3. Processed and cropped slightly for scale in Lightroom.
Color Riot!
wooden / paper flowers in Santa Fe, NM
We are in Santa Fe New Mexico for a few days, visiting our daughter Anna who just started Grad School in Art Therapy at South Western University. We spent out first afternoon walking around the Plaza area and along Canyon Road, poking into shops and galleries. This riot of color was at an amazingly eclectic shop just off the Plaza. I am not certain if they are painted wood or paper, but the effect, in mass, is irresistible…or it is to me. (Someone suggested they might be corn husk.)
To be as unobtrusive in Sunday crowd of tourists I shot mostly with my little pocket Sony WX220, which is small enough so most people mistake it for a phone 🙂 I fit right in, and it produces images just as fine, within its range, as my superzoom! This is an in-camera HDR at the wide end of the zoom…25mm equivalent field of view.
Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Crane at first light
Sandhill Cranes calling at first light. Bosque del Apache NWR
I attempted this post this morning from the airport on my way to the Everglades. It did not work. So…better late than never.
I love the light on these Sandhill Cranes at Bosque del Apache NWR in the first sun of the day.
Sony HX400V. Processed in Lightroom.
A Density of Snow Geese
Close up of Snow Geese in mild panic.
When the Snow Geese (and the Ross’ Geese mixed in) rise in panic at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, thousands of birds at a time, you are presented with an almost overwhelming spectacle…so overwhelming that it is hard to decide what to shoot. Do you go for the wide shot showing the shear multitude of birds? Do you zoom in for a shot of the density? As they come overhead, again, how to frame that energy? Of course, you attempt to do it all, every panic, but no matter how nimble your zooming, you do not ever really manage to catch more than a few thin slices of the event. And that is when you don’t remember you could be shooting video! 🙂
This is the panic as it passes close over at 1200mm equivalent field of view. These birds are not as densely packed as they sometimes are, but still it is a frameful. Sony HX400V. Sports Mode. 1/800th @ ISO 160 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Windows tablet.
Mule Deer at Bosque
A small group of Mule Deer at Bosque del Apache NWR
The herd of Mule Deer at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge seems to be doing well. They are not as tame as the White-tailed Deer at Lighthouse State Park in Cape May New Jersey, which will calmly graze withing feet of your, but they don’t spook when you stop on the road to take photos. I regret not getting out of the car for this and the rest of the photos I took of this group, since there is some heat distortion from heated air escaping from the open car window. Still it is rare to see the buck. 🙂
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 160 @ f6.3. Processed, and cropped slightly in Lightroom on my Windows tablet.
Crane on Mountain
Sandhill Crane off Willow Deck
The vast majority of my images from Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and the Festival of the Cranes were taken between 30 minutes before dawn and 90 minutes after. The early morning light at Bosque is, of course, spectacular, and I love it…but my timing is more a matter of circumstance than anything else. Bosque has always been a working trip for me. Come 8:30ish, and I have to be on duty at the ZEISS booth in the Expo Tent, and, most days, preparing for a workshop I am leading. This adds incentive on those mornings when I really do not feel like dragging myself past the breakfast at the hotel, eating granola bars in the car, and arriving somewhere on the Refuge before dawn. Not that I have ever regretted it. 🙂
Some of the best light is just at first light off Willow and Coyote Decks on the back side of Farm Loop. Early in the week these fields were dry and empty, but on Thursday they began to flood the fields to bring the birds in close for the weekend…something they do every year for the Festival of the Cranes…and by Saturday and Sunday the stretch of road between the decks was one of the best places on the Refuge to photograph Cranes and dabbling ducks…there was even a small raft of Snow Geese there both mornings. Because of the dramatic backdrop of the mountains to the west, and the angle of the light, it is also a great place to practice flight photography.
I have a sequence of shots of this Crane as it crossed my line of sight and then banked away toward the ponds on the Route 1. In this shot it is just beginning its turn.
Sony HX400V in Sports Mode. ISO 160 @ 1/400th @ f6.3. Processed and cropped for scale in Lightroom on my Windows tablet.