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New Photo Gallery – Fauna

Cactus Blossoms

A cholla cactus in full bloom in Albuquerque

A cactus blossom burns deep red on an Albuquerque afternoon

Coronado Mall

A few weekends ago I was tabling for BikeABQ at Coronado Mall.  The event was focused on kids’ fitness, and so in addition to our ragtag bicycling outfit, there were people promoting exercise, dance, and even gardening.

There was a little dance troupe of about ten kids dancing around in various traditional costume, and they had some great facial expressions.

The boys in the troupe in general didn’t seem especially enthused to be dancing with icky girls, but when they were free from the risk of cooties, they hammed it up a bit.

The one little guy on the end in particular had some great facial expressions.

After the performance, the crowd milled around a bit.  Next to me was a booth for the Rio Grande Community Farm, where Sara was helping kids plant seeds in ingenious little planters made from recycled newspaper.  Lobo Lucy watched carefully.

Meanwhile, UNM mascot Lobo Louie was chatting it up with the ladies.

That wolf sure knows how to howl!  Of course, he and I got into a bit of trouble with Mall Security when I started riding him around the mall on my Xtracycle.  Though that didn’t stop the head of security from taking a picture for his kids with his phone.

Springtime in Downtown Albuquerque

Now that I have my shiny new Nikon D300s, I need to get out and shoot with it.  After lunch the other day I just decided to walk around downtown and get some shots of the blossoming trees.  It had been snowing earlier in the morning – big puffy flakes – but by noon the snow had melted and the sun had come out.

Peeling Paint

Fall 2009

Here are a few more photos from Fall 2009, in Gallup and Albuquerque.  These were taken with a Nikon FE using Kodak Gold 400 film.

More Photos from Rome – Spring 2004

More photos saved from my old hard drive.  

Las Vegas – May 2009

The famous neon of Glitter Gulch, on the Fulmont Street Experience

A friend of mine recently moved from San Francisco back to her home town of Las Vegas, NV.  She was upset that whenever any friends visited, all they wanted was to drink and gamble.  ”Fine,” I told her.  ”I’m flying out there for a weekend, and you can show me the Nevada that you grew up in.”

The first night we hit the Strip, not to gamble, but to people watch.  The lights, the sounds, and everything else were overwhelming, and everywhere people were caught up in the heady illusion of instant gratification without apparent consequence (the next morning, of course, would be different).

The next day we drove two hours north to Beatty, which is five miles west of the ghost town Rhyolite.  Between 1905 and 1911,  the gold-rush town grew to a population of 5,000 and then dropped to nothing.  Financed largely by Charles Schwab, the town in its heyday was highly advanced and sophisticated.  Now, all that stands are a few empty shells of buildings.

The gold dried up in Rhyolite, but its sister town, Beatty, proved to have a much more abundant, important, and reliable resource:  water.  Beatty provided the water for the gold mining town, and when Rhyolite blew away on the sands of time, Beatty stuck around.  It’s still a lonely little town, but it’s full of incredible characters.

A ghost in Rhyolite

Stuck in Beatty with not much to do, we hit the town’s three bars, which had all sorts of locals who welcomed us with arms wide open.  They were a trip and a half, and we made some memories that won’t soon be forgotten:  climbing into an abandoned basement church, wearing a viking helmet, and the urinal whose flushing mechanism was the brake lever of wall-mounted motorcycle handlebars.

Lea County Fair and Rodeo

Last week I headed down to the southeast corner of New Mexico, to the Lea County Fair and Rodeo, held at the Jake McClure Arena in Lovington.  As a city slicker from Cleveland, it was by no means something I would normally attend, which made it all the more incredible of an experience.

Fairs in general are an otherwordly experience.  There are the bright lights and tinkling, repetitive sounds of the Midway.  The sickeningly alluring odors of deep fried twinkies, roast turkey legs, funnel cakes, and other things you probably shouldn’t eat but are too intrigued to resist.  Not to mention odors that are just plain sickening without being alluring – overflowing trash bins, port-a-potties, and the livestock yards.

Ah, livestock.  This is one part of the county fair to which I’ve never had much exposure.  Down in Lea County, though, livestock is a way of life.

Lovington is just a few miles away from Texas, and it shows; it feels much more like the Lone Star State than it feels like New Mexico.

See the entire photo gallery here.

Autumn Leaves (2003)

More from the photo shoot in Cincinnati.

Anemone II (2003)

These flowers were in the same meadow as ‘Anemone I.’ Those two images, as well as another of a bird nest in the field, I bundled together as a three-photo set, had prints made, and framed them for my mother for Mother’s Day.