Getting the Shot
I’m back in New Mexico leading another group of photographers through the Land of Enchantment. The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta has been providing us with some terrific photo opportunities.
Mountain Sunset
As I continue to scan some of my old slides to present here in my journal I’ve come to realize that I miss the rich, saturated colors that I could get by deliberately underexposing Ektachrome film. With the right subject matter, a light to moderately underexposed slide looked terrific right out of the camera. No processing software necessary, just shine some light through it and enjoy.
Ready to Fly
Scan of an Ektachrome slide I exposed in 1994 at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. The balloon laid out on the ground in the foreground is the one I was flying in that day.
The Long and Winding Road
Going way back in the archives for today’s image. Original exposure shot on Ektachrome slide film 20 years ago.
She’s a Real Bombshell
The scanner I’ve been using for my work on film is pretty crappy so I invested in a decent one yesterday and actually got around to hooking it up at around 2 in the morning. I just wanted to do a quick test so I threw an old slide in it and made this low-res scan just to see that it worked. I think I will be happy with the scanner when I take time to make some high-res scans. This particular image is scanned from an Ektachrome slide I made in 1993. I was hiking in the desert in area that had been a practice bombing range during WWII and came across this dented-up old bombshell lying in the dirt near an extinct volcanic cinder cone. I made the image with a 24mm lens on my ME Super SLR. I just shot some images last week with the same lens on the same camera body. Now, 20 years after this shot was made I will scan some fresh negatives from the same setup and see what they look like. I can’t wait.
Color and Texture
One of the reasons I love spending time in the southwest with a camera is because I love to work with color and texture and these ingredients are found together there in abundance.
Tiny Stream
I always enjoy returning to this little stream with my camera because the vivid color of the algae that covers the rocks contrasts so well with the autumn leaves and the sky color that the moving water reflects.
Odds and Ends
I felt that this nice little collection of souvenirs from the past should be presented in an image with a nice nostalgic feel to it.
Simply Perfect
Bold colors and simple geometry are things that I truly enjoy combining in basic yet strong compositions. The end result may look very simple – and that’s exactly my intention, but it actually took some time and effort once I spotted the elements to make it work. Anyone watching me changing lenses and crawling around on the ground to find the right position and angle might have thought I was slightly nuts but this type of image really agrees with my personal artistic sensibilities. So for me it was worth the work and I really don’t mind what anyone who saw me lying in the dirt might have thought.
Artifacts
I’m in a hurry so I’m just posting something that is more documentary in nature today. This is a small collection of ancient, broken pottery pieces that can be found littering the ground in Chaco Canyon. Ceremonial breaking of pottery was a common practice in the culture here a millennia ago. Today it is illegal to collect any of the artifacts here but I did enjoy studying the variety of textures and designs on the fragments and making a photographic record of some of them.