Every December, the University of New Mexico celebrates The Hanging of the Greens, an event to welcome the coming winter. The university president invites the community into the President’s House on campus for hot chocolate and cookies, but the main event is the thousands upon thousands of luminarias (or farolitos, if you hail from Santa Fe). These simple decorations – a candle in a paper bag filled with sand – are a New Mexican tradition.
Since becoming interested in Photography, I find myself paying more and more attention to the weather. A brilliant blue sky makes a wonderful backdrop for nearly any subject. A heavy rain lightly mists plants and brings out their colors. A setting sun bathes everything in the golden glow of some celestial oven.
In this case, snow was falling gently in large, puffy flakes. I call this image Fuji Rock because it reminds me of the Japanese watercolor prints in the Cleveland Art Museum – no real sense of perspective, a tree reaching wide over a stone, everything seemingly at peace yet somehow maintaining a certain intensity.
