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September 26, 2017 Murphey
I spent a full day and night with Michael Martin Murphey and his team in 2013 for my New Mexico Magazine feature "Nine Nights a Week" on Red River's bustling summer music scene, so I was thrilled last month when they called and asked me to return to Red River to make new photos for them to use in promoting Murphey's various shows and projects.
I was lucky to have Christina along as my photo assistant. Besides managing my three cameras and lenses (see detail immediately below, September 19), she helped keep Murphey's face lit under his hat in the late afternoon sunlight, aiming the reflector as she's done for me a few times over the years. Without it, Murphey's face would have been in dark shadow and I would have had to use post processing tools to lighten it, which has big tradeoffs and never looks as good in the end. As it is, we're pretty happy with these and look forward to seeing these and other shots on new MMM promotions next year, including billboards, posters, social media and more.
September 19, 2017 Canoe
As we set up for our photo session and awaited the arrival of Michael Martin Murphey, Christina and I photographed Steve Hegland's gorgeous and recently restored 1905 Old Town canoe on the shore of the lake at Steve's Bitter Creek Ranch high above Red River.
Christina came along as my photo assistant, helping manage three Nikon cameras (D5, D4, D300) each holding a different lens (24-70mm, 70-200mm, 85mm), but I especially needed her to hold a reflector to bounce late-afternoon sunlight back up onto Murphey's face under his hat. You'll see above, when I post them soon, how effective and important she was in wielding the reflector. Meantime, she took her own photos around the lake as we waited...and I took this photo of her taking Steve's photo with his beautiful red canoe.
We both recognized the canoe, and the setting, as a great photography opportunity so we didn't mind as Murphey ran late. Besides, previewing the settings where we could photograph Murphey was an important use of our time. We arrived early to scout locations and light around area where we would shoot. It turned out well and I'll be able to post some results soon. Meantime, we have the Old Town canoe!
September 12, 2017 New Mexico's Art in Public Places
With Roosevelt General Hospital in Portales about to receive my fifth big framed photograph (see August 26 below) on public display in New Mexico, I entered new images in this year's call for New Mexico Arts' (NMA) innovative Art in Public Places (AIPP) program. New Mexico artists and galleries are invited to submit three images, then a state committee juries and selects images to tour around the state for purchase by public organizations for permanent installation in their buildings.
My first year, two of my three entries made the cut and began the state tour--and both were selected at the first stop on the tour, in Albuquerque, where a Rio Rancho recreation center and the Belen Public Library each purchased my photos. In each program year since, the jury has selected all three of my entries. I learned last week that my new entries, shown here, all made the cut and will tour the state from this fall through next spring--unless (fingers crossed) they're all bought up early again. At top left, I photographed an old metal boat by a stock pond atop Johnson Mesa last spring, and at the right I photographed the road through Yankee Canyon on the way to Johnson Mesa on that same outing. Above right, I photographed the Navajo Nation just south of Shiprock late last year. Click any image to enlarge it. I hope to post these in the blog and the News page in the coming months to say that they're going up in public buildings around New Mexico. Here's hoping.
August 27, 2017 3M
Four years ago I spent an entire day and night interviewing and photographing Western singer-songwriter Michael Martin Murphey in Red River for a feature in New Mexico Magazine. I'd known Murphey's songs since the 1970s. I especially enjoyed photographing him outdoors, up Bitter Creek Canyon at his ranch and summer chuckwagon concert series site. As I sat here writing a blog post yesterday morning, the phone rang from Red River. Murphey and his people have called me back up there to shoot a new series of promotional photos next week. I'm hoping to take Christina as my photo assistant and we'll make another day and night of it. My four-year-old photos above show what we'll be up to. I'm looking forward to it. August 26, 2017 An Oasis in New Mexico
Last week, Roosevelt General Hospital in Portales selected my "Oasis State Park at Sunrise" for purchase and public display through New Mexico's innovative Art in Public Places (AIPP) program administered by New Mexico Arts (NMA). Four years ago, I set an early alarm to be at the park outside Portales in hopes of getting some great photographs for my 2014 New Mexico Magazine travel feature on sister-cities Clovis and Portales. This one didn't make the magazine, but it became my fifth public purchase and installation through AIPP.
It almost didn't happen. Three years ago the Portales hospital selected "Tanks, Crossroads NM" (right) for purchase but then the hospital administration changed and the purchase was never completed. Finally, this summer, NMA succeeded in getting the current people at Roosevelt General Hospital to complete its purchase--but they didn't like "Tanks" and wondered whether they could choose something else. I sent eight photos from their area and they chose "Oasis State Park at Sunrise." Voila! Kudos and thanks to Michelle La-Flamme Childs at NMA for her tenacity! (And double thanks to Michelle for saying that she wants to purchase "Tanks" later this year for New Mexico's Permanent Collection!) Christina and I look forward to driving down to Portales this fall to install my newly printed and framed photograph in the hospital. Road trip!
August 10, 2017 Peaches
Christina and I took a long walk one morning in search of a great Sunday brunch. Aided by Trip Adviser, we chose Peaches in Brooklyn's Stuyvescent Heights. We arrived to find a one-hour wait, always a good sign although we were mighty hungry by then. I occupied some of the wait by taking iPhone photos.
Standing outside the busy doorway, I pretended to take pictures of the hand-painted sign but, of course, my object was to capture the busy flow of people as they passed through the door. "Street photography" is a great genre and it's often a matter of photographing people without looking like you're focusing on them, that in fact your interest lies on something or somewhere else. The ubiquity of phone cameras and selfies now makes street photography even easier: Everyone's taking pictures no matter where you go. People have grown accustomed to it. Here was a case where using my phone camera gave me a distinct advantage over one of my Nikons with its big lens. Peaches serves "modern Southern comfort food," and it proved well worth the wait.
August 1, 2017 A Walk Around Brooklyn
Here's a pair of my favorite iPhone 7 photos from my walks around Brooklyn, both of these near Darcy's brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvescent. I like the sense that the bike might grow into the emerging plants from the pavers, and I love the colors. The big Clinton Hill condo building on the right still bears its original sign, "The Graham Home for Old Ladies--Incorporated 1851."
July 27, 2017 Brooklyn
We traveled light to visit my daughter Darcy and her husband Jarrett in Brooklyn last week, leaving my heavy Nikon cameras and lenses behind in favor of carry-on luggage and iPhone 7 photography. It worked out well. As soon as we arrived at their brownstone, I took a photo out the kitchen window, above left. Darcy and I took lots of long walks, as we love to do whenever we're together, and I held the iPhone high to get her in a frame with a lighted Brooklyn sign that we both fancied.
In addition to long daily walks through several Brooklyn neighborhoods, past countless brownstones (right), highlights included some great restaurants, an evening grill atop Darcy and Jarrett's rooftop, an amazing Georgia O'Keeffe show ("Living Modern") at the Brooklyn Museum, and a Mets game--our second major league baseball game in one week! It was fun taking the subway an hour to and from the ballpark with other baseball fans, especially the late night trip home after an exciting Mets victory in the bottom of the ninth inning. New York City works for me only in small doses, though it's so much cleaner and more enjoyable than when I first started staying there during my music touring days in the late 1980s. Darcy's been there (in the West Village before Brooklyn) for 13 years and loves it. This was our third visit during those 13 years, each visit just a few days, and that's just right for me. I'm always happy to get back home to small-town life in the quiet and slow rural American West.
July 20, 2017 Denver Airport Hotel Last night we enjoyed a great Colorado Rockies game at Denver's downtown Coors Field--my first major league baseball game in decades and Christina's first ever--then walked the revitalized neighborhood between Coors Field and Union Station. After dinner in a brew pub, we checked into a hotel near the airport outside town. This morning I stood over the table in our hotel suite to take this photo of the blue couches flooded with early morning sunlight streaming in from the windows. Leaving our car at the hotel and taking their shuttle to the airport, we're flying east. Next stop Brooklyn!
July 16, 2017 Rope Tricks
While I've been off neglecting my website and generally not working at photography, writing, or much else--I'm enjoying summer as a retired man!--my website continues to work on its own, most recently bringing a deal for the National Folk Festival to use my image of Texas trick roper Brice Chapman from last year's inaugural Tucumcari Rawhide Days. Brice and his daughter Grace will travel from Lubbock to Greensboro, North Carolina, to perform at this year's National Folk Festival September 8-10, 2017. The huge annual three-day festival is entirely free to the public and a great show of American folklife. I'm proud to have my photo on the festival website this summer.
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