In September of 2023 I traveled to the American Southwest and Rocky Mountain Region. I admit, it has taken me quite awhile to begin the process of uploading images to this website. If you follow my artist page on Facebook, you may have had a glimpse of these images before. I took several thousand photographs. It is a task to sort and catalog and edit that quantity of photographs but my trip covered well over 8,000 road miles. There was so much to see. My trip began in Santa Fe, New Mexico and ended in Kalispell, Montana. It was quite the journey. It was my first post-pandemic trip. I have been quite fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit many of our states in the US. This was my third time visiting Santa Fe. I was interested in traveling to some new destinations and I also wanted to apply some of the landscape photography techniques I had learned during the pandemic. While the majority of my working career had been as a photography teacher, my classes were focused on beginner and early to intermediate camera work, darkroom technique and PhotoShop skills. Working life did not afford me a lot of time to work on my own skill set beyond what I needed to use in my classroom. My retired life is more forgiving. During the pandemic I had made the leap from a crop format DSLR to using a full frame, mirrorless camera system. I also began to use manual camera settings almost exclusively to refine my exposure results. During this focused exploration, I learned how to successfully shoot night photographs and had become interested in dark and clear night sky photography. I diligently worked on my raw photo editing capabilities. The images from this trip allowed me excellent opportunities to apply my learning.
Santa Fe has a distinctive architectural style and I am always fascinated by this. It is quite different from Northeastern architecture. Buildings are made of adobe bricks which are a mixture of sun dried earth (mud) and straw. Adobe style is unique, with many subtle changes in its tan to orange palette. These colors are warm like the desert surroundings. Here a Pueblo Style building serves as a backdrop to a rugged, wild, field of grasses, on top of a hill that overlooks the small city. Skies don't get much bluer than this. It was 55 degrees when we got up but it wasted no time reaching 81 degrees which is typical for September in the high desert.
Santa Fe has a distinctive architectural style and I am always fascinated by this. It is quite different from Northeastern architecture. Buildings are made of adobe bricks which are a mixture of sun dried earth (mud) and straw. Adobe style is unique, with many subtle changes in its tan to orange palette. These colors are warm like the desert surroundings. Here a Pueblo Style building serves as a backdrop to a rugged, wild, field of grasses, on top of a hill that overlooks the small city. Skies don't get much bluer than this. It was 55 degrees when we got up but it wasted no time reaching 81 degrees which is typical for September in the high desert.
The Sangre de Cristo Mountains (Spanish for "Blood of Christ") are the southernmost subrange of the Rocky Mountains. Serving as a backdrop to the rugged landscape and buildings, they are located in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. Several peaks in New Mexico are over thirteen thousand feet. One must adjust to the altitude of this area of the country. Hydration is important. They actually sell small canisters of oxygen in these high altitude areas.
Built by Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy between 1869 and 1886, The Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, is a Roman Catholic cathedral in downtown Santa Fe. Santa Fe is home to many churches. On previous visits I focused my time on the famous Loretto Chapel, home of the miraculous staircase. This trip included a trip there, but I was taken by the architectural presence of this Basilica. Saint Francis Cathedral was designed in the Romanesque Revival style. It features characteristic round arches separated by Corinthian columns and truncated square towers. The large rose window in front and those of the Twelve Apostles in the lateral nave windows were imported from Clermont-Ferrand in France. The cathedral was built from yellow limestone blocks. A 2005 addition to the upper façade of the cathedral is a small, round window featuring a dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit. It is a stained glass replica of the translucent alabaster window designed in the 17th century by the Italian artist Bernini for St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. It is quite magnificent.
Much of the area around Santa Fe is known for its rugged landscapes. Mountains surround the city and it is easy to drive to a higher vantage point for a better view. I am always fascinated by the textures of stone, grass, trees and sky. After a few days we headed toward Colorado for our next destination. Along the drive on US-84 we saw several areas of interest. Chimney Rock National Monument is a 4,726-acre U.S. National Monument in the San Juan National Forest of southwestern Colorado. To me, Chimney Rock looks like a giant sphinx without a face and extended legs. It has quite colorful layers of rock and sits majestically at the peak of a mountain.
Little chapels and churches pepper the landscape in New Mexico. It has often been said that the first Spanish explorers came to the New World for three things: glory, gold and God. The large Catholic population of New Mexico is due to having been colonized by the Spaniards. They set about building colonies by building churches and establishing missions. This little stone church sat along the roadway near Espanola, NM.
My favorite part of the American Southwest is the landscape. It is stark and rugged and embued with rich, lusciously, foreign color to this Northeasterner. There are reds, oranges, and purples in every highlight and shadow. The mountains recede in blues like back home, only more intensely, with distinctly different forms. The sky seems to go on forever and ever. It is mesmerizing. It leaves me incredulous. My understanding is that it was greener than usual in 2023. This area, near the Echo Amphitheater and Ghost Ranch is the place where Georgia O'Keeffe came to escape New York and a not so great marriage. It was in this region she unleashed the genius paintings she is remembered for. We did stop here for a bit and I am sure glad I was allowed a brief respite to breathe that all in. I would have loved to have visited the ranch but alas, that was not on the tour agenda. When traveling on a bus tour, one must give themself over to a planner's master plan. It is/was an odd lesson for this person who spent much of her life in charge and taking charge. Fitting, I suppose, as I am smack in the middle of this less-planned-for portion of my life. Now, gaze far away into the distance. O'Keeffe's favorite mountain top (the flat top one) The Pedernal, is right smack in the middle of that range. I wonder what she was thinking of right here?
The camera settings I used here at Echo Ampitheater are in my sunlight, sweet spot range, for getting color and detail. One of the things I discovered in my recent camera studies is to always use manual settings when I want RICH color. ISO 100 so the image isn't noisy with artifacts. f/25 so that the field of focus is sharp from front to back. Longer shutter speed - 1/25s (there is a range here that will do it) so the sensor has long enough to drink in the colors (imagine the camera slurping color through a long straw). This image was handheld on a deep breath so the rock transition edges weren't too sharp...just slightly soft...but NO WIGGLING! It's all full of peachy oranges and lavender purples. A sky cannot possibly be more blue. There I go giving away my secrets, tee hee...once a teacher, always a teacher...and oh....those settings apply to my full frame sensor. It's science and art in a perfect marriage with a huge sprinkle of texture for interest. Are all photographers this neurotic about how they work?