Posts in Category: New Mexico
Snow Landing
Photography in the snow is always a bit of challenge, but when it snows at Bosque del Apache NWR, it is well worth the effort. This shot of Cranes and Geese landing in the snow shows a lot of subtle detail, and contains a lot of dynamic tension. I like the Crane just falling into the frame.
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. 1200mm equivalent field of view. F6.5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 500. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Bosque del Apache Snow
Only once before in my memory, close to 25 years ago it must be, has snow fallen during the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache NWR. This year, Sunday morning we woke to several inches on the ground and snow still falling. The roads between our hotel in Socorro and the refuge were snow packed and icy and the refuge loop, while manageable, was snow covered and even drifted in spots. Of course I had to get out there to find Cranes and Snow Geese in the snow. I, along with maybe 50 other intrepid photographers, found them at the far north end of the loop, in what they call the farm fields, and along the west side of the loop as it turns back, facing the mountains, now hidden in snow clouds. The snow on the ground, reflecting back, made the most of the light even with snow still in the air. In the hour I spent there, the snow clouds began to clear off the mountains, providing a dramatic backdrop.
This is an in-camera HDR from the Samsung Smart Camera WB800F. I find it amazing that the HDR software in the camera is sophisticated enough to capture a scene like this with movement. It must have correctly selected the moving Cranes from a single image. I used the HDR Scene filter in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 to bring up the mountains even more, and hold some drama in the still heavy clouds. Finally I used a Photo Editor Smart Blur brush and the Note stylus to smooth out some of the HDR noise in the clouds. All in all this is one of my favorite shots from the Bosque, not only from this trip, but from all the years I have photographed there. And that is saying something. 🙂
Landing Light : Happy Sunday!
One of the things I love about Bosque del Apache and the Festival of the Cranes in November is the amazing New Mexico light. We did not get it this year. The skies were cloudy at best. As I write this it is snowing. There was barely enough light on any day for photography. Still the birds are here. Time to get creative and push the technology to the limits.
Even a few years ago a shot like this…low light action at ISO 1600 and 1/320th of a second…would have been unthinkable with even the best full fledged DSLR cameras. Yesterday, an hour after sunrise with flakes of snow in the air, I was able to catch this Crane coming in to land with a small sensor super-zoom camera. And I had a 12×8 inch print made on the demo Canon printer at the Festival that looks good enough to hang on the wall. Amazing!
And I like the shot. I like the forms and textures…the grace of the bird…the colors of the fall grains and mountains, even in the dull light.
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. Exposure as above, at 1200mm equivalent field of view @ f6.3. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
And for the Sunday Thought : the light is what it is, and no amount of wishing will change it. If you are a photographer you can pack your gear and wait for better light, or you can get out there and see what can be done with the light you have. You never know. Even at the edge of what your gear is capable of, there might be a very special image waiting. And of course that is a great spiritual lesson as well. If you make the most of the light God gives you every day, you can expect blessings every day. That has been my experience often enough to provide a firm foundation for a life of faith. 🙂
Snow Geese in Flight
It was cold and cloudy all day yesterday…not typical weather for the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache NWR. In fact I can only remember one Festival in the past 30 years with a similar cold and threat of snow. The Geese were hunkered down close the the ground for the most part, and the Cranes feed quietly, stoic, in the cold.
Terrible light for photography, especially flight photos.
Except when you catch a shot like this, where the subdued light allows a full range exposure of the white plumage of the goose, set of nicely against the gray patterned sky.
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. f5.6 @1/800th @ ISO 800. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Bosque del Apache Thrill
We are at the festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache NWR this week. We got here Wednesday and did a quick loop around the refuge. My daughter Erin, if she was ever here, was here as a two year old, so this is really her first experience of the Bosque. And, as is only fitting, we drove up along the corn fields the refuge folk have prepared for the Geese and Cranes just as a flock of 4 or 5 thousand (maybe more) Snow Geese panicked and took to the air. This is classic Bosque. The swirling Geese panicking are the one sight, the one experience, of the Bosque, that, once seen, compels people to return season after season. And it does not matter how often you have seen it, each time it happens, you get that same quickening of the senses and the spirit! The thrill of the Bosque!
The light was somewhat subdued, but I swung the control dial on the Canon SX50HS to Sports Mode and shot several sequences of the swirling Geese. This is the densest shot from the series, as the Geese were still rising off the ground.
Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Acoma Sky City
Into every life some rain must fall. We decided to visit Acoma Sky City on our way from Gallup to Socorro yesterday. We also decided not to be put off by a little rain. It was the day we had, and it was the last weekday Sky City would be open to the public until next spring, so we went. Of course traditional Acomas would have considered it a blessed day. Much of the energy of their religion goes into praying for rain for the crops they traditionally grew at the base of the Mesa. And it was a blessed day. I shot a lot of HDR from under an umbrella 🙂
Sky City sits on a mesa top 700 feet above the valley. Until the 1930s the only way up there was long climb up foot and hand holes worn into the sandstone. A movie company built a road to film in the pueblo and another film company paved it, so today the tribe shuttles tourists to the top in small buses. My wife and daughter and one other were the only tourists on this rainy last day of the tourist season.
I could go on and an on. It was a memorable experience, but I will spare you. The tribe maintains an excellent Web presence. Just google Acoma Sky City and maneuver around the casino pages, or visit the Sky City Facebook page, and you will find a lot of information.
This shot is of one of the larger “hidden” kivas. The Spanish tried to whipe out the Acoma religion by blowing up the round underground chambers where it was practiced. The Acoma retaliated by building new kivas right out in plain sight, disguised as houses. They had to give up the roundness but it was a price they were willing to pay to keep the tribe alive. You can identify the hidden kivas by the unique white ladders with lightning bolts across the top. The ladders symbolize rain. White for clouds and lightening bolts… All the kivas in Acoma Sky City must of been happy places this day.
In-camera HDR from the Samsung Smart Camera WB800F. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 using the new HDR filter.
Church Rock Canyon, NM
My wife and second youngest daughter traveled to New Mexico with me this week. I am working the Festival of the Cranes starting tomorrow, but yesterday and today we are visiting old friends and old haunts from our 12 years as NM residents. All of our children were born in NM. Erin, the afore-mentioned daughter, was 2 when we moved so she does not remember anything of it. This is her first visit back since.
We spent a few hours yesterday hiking up Church Rock Canyon at Red Rock State Park, just outside Gallup NM. The trail has not changed much since we hiked it 25 years ago. It is still a beautiful little Canyon carved through the Chinle sandstone formation, with the weathered spires of Church Rock always hanging tantalizingly on the horizon. It was a perfect fall day for the canyon, cool enough to enjoy hiking, with just enough whispy clouds in the sky to add contrast to the HDR shots. 🙂
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Rich Tone mode. 23mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 using the new HDR Scene filter and the Detail tools. I find that in much HDR work, the blue of a deep blue sky is hard to manage in processing. The HDR processing tends to add a kind of light freckling to the blue, especially with this kind of whispy clouds. For my shots yesterday, after Snapseed, I opened them in Photo Editor, still on the tablet, and went over parts of the sky with a “Smart Blur” brush, to smooth away the freckles without losing the cloud detail.
A Landscape of Wonder: Happy Sunday
One of the things I have to be thankful for is the fact that my job takes me to so many wonderful places in the course of a year. I get to enjoy the landscapes and the creatures of so many destinations all across North America, and generally at least one place in Europe. Even at home, I live in place where other’s come to vacation…2 miles from the ocean beaches and the rocky coast, a few miles from Rachel Carson NWR and Wells National Estuarine Research Center. I have a remnant sand plane inland and the southern most peat bog not far north. I just discovered there is a large Nature Conservancy reserve, the Waterboro Barrens, full of rare butterflies and dragonflies, totally unexplored (by me), not 30 miles from my door. Wonderful.
Of course, I realize that the wonder is in me, not in the landscape or even in the creatures. Wonder is something I carry with me when I travel, and the one thing I never have to worry about forgetting to pack. I take no credit for it. I suspect, rationally, and I believe, faithfully, that the capacity for wonder is in us all. Everything I know says we are born with it…it is part of our inheritance as children of God. Over the past few years, through the thousands of people who have touched my life through this blog, and my posts and their post on Facebook and Google+, I have come to appreciate just how universal that sense of wonder is. And that only makes it more wonderful!
This image is from my trip to Bosque del Apache in New Mexico last November. Just one of the wonderful places I got to. My wife and I are making plans for later today to take our sense of wonder out around home here. It is good thing to do on Sunday afternoon. Happy Sunday.
Sunny with a chance of scattered geese.
I am dropping all the way back to November for this #flybyfriday shot of Snow Geese at Bosque del Apache NWR. Part of the problem with doing a Pic 4 Today blog is that you take more photos than you can share, and new work rolls in on top of recent work, and sometimes you never do get back to some really fine shots form past trips. I have lots of Bosque del Apache shots that I have never shared. 
Here I really like the contrast between the sharply defined geese in the foreground and the scattered cloud of geese behind them. The mountain anchoring the bottom of the frame helps, and so do the wispy clouds behind the far geese. All in all, it makes, as I see it, for a highly dynamic image.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. 577mm equivalent field of view. f5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Coyote on the Prowl: Bosque del Apache
One of the little tricks birders learn fast is “always look where the birders are looking.” If you see birding-types in the field with their binos or spotting scopes intently trained on a bush or a tree, then it is a pretty safe bet they are looking at bird, and more than even odds they are looking at a bird you might also want to see. So you always, always stop and look.
Something similar happens among photographers at Bosque during peak visiting times like the Festival of the Cranes. If you see a car load of photographers out of their car along side the road and set up with cameras on tripods, then it is a pretty safe bet to pull up behind or ahead of them (not so close as to scare off whatever they are photographing, but not far enough off so you miss the action:) and get out and at least evaluate the situation.
That is how I found this Coyote, working the dyke on the other side of the water channel along the tour loop at Bosque. I was only soon enough and quick enough to get this one shot before he/she disappeared into the reeds on the other side…but still…I might have driven right by if not for that “look where the photographers are looking” trick.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/640th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.