If anyone asks me how did I learn photography, I tell them, by walking the streets of Tokyo for hundreds of hours with my very first DSLR camera, a Nikon D80. What is great about living in a city with wide spread public transportation is you can take a train to one area, walk randomly to where your eyes take you, then just hop on another train and get back home without having to worry about returning to where your car is parked. This is how I went about finding one of my more famous photos, at least in Japan, which I titled, “Last Green Leaves Before Autumn.” I submitted it to Metropolis Magazine (the largest weekly English magazine in Japan) and they featured it in the Photo of the Week section. Picking up a copy of the magazine the Friday afternoon it came out and seeing my photo featured inside, I was stunned and even stopped strangers passing by to say (in English), “that’s my photo!” It was a moment of exhileration I have rarely ever felt again.
This was a return for me to both Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, and also Sierra Negra mountain. I was first in this area over 18 months ago and made one of my favorite landscape photos of New Mexico, so much so I had a print made and it is hanging on the wall in the dining room. The skies were of a different level of drama this time featuring bold clouds, and therefore made the mountain look totally different. Also, I have drone video this time featuring the mountain in the background.
While out on a drone aerial photoshoot for a client in remote Rio Rancho, turning away from the actual property site, I saw from the drone’s point of view this long desert road that is apparently a popular spot for motorcycles to do burnouts on! This is something that would have been very hard to observe from ground level. I am often surprised by what I find when I get home and import drone aerial photos. Even without the tire marks, I like the view the drone captured where the winding road takes the viewer into the desert, but the height of the drone keeps the viewer safe from the hardships of the desert, allowing quick escape if necessary.
This is an unusual blog post or me as I do not usually post much personal content on this, my business website. It is also extremely rare that I have an entire weekend off, and even rarer that it is spent out of town on an overnight trip that was not part of a photo job. Then also I have not really talked about realizing a life long dream a few months ago of owning a proper sports car. However, a weekend trip to Las Vegas, New Mexico with Jessica and our dogs Kiki and Artie was that good I decided to share. This all came about because of the RSW Cruise 2019, otherwise it would never of happened!
As best as I can remember, for the first time since I was a kid, I saw a movie at a drive in theater. The experience was great (the movies were not)! This was part of an ultra-rare, full weekend off, out of town, not part of a photo job holiday. It was me and Jessica and our dogs Kiki and Artie all in the M3 with the top down completely under the stars, looking up at the big screen. And the stars! They were so bright and vivid! Not since I spent the night at the bottom of the Grand Canyon did they look as vivid to me.
Thanks to Jessica’s curiosity about the curious and the website Atlas Obscura, on a recent weekend trip to Las Vegas, New Mexico, we drove up a picturesque road to the United World College, checked in at the visitor’s center, and were handed a key card to The Dwan Light Sanctuary. This is a peaceful temple of sorts that uses architecture and prism widows to create a visual interior landscape of geometric design. I found it quite the unique space as my eye was drawn to both the architecture of the building itself, and the scattered light falling on its walls. This is a hidden gem of tranquility deep in northern New Mexico.
If you asked me, I would tell you that a tripod is a must for making long exposure photos. In fact, I have already shared some long exposure ocean photos from San Diego featuring the Ocean Beach Pier that were all shot with my Nikon mounted on a tripod. That said, if getting a tack sharp image is not needed, handholding a slightly long exposure photo, especially with a lens that has VR (vibration reduction), can produce some very cool shots. The latter was the method I used to hold my Nikon right above the incoming water at Imperial Beach, San Diego, California at sunset. Why do a long exposure? Because it makes the water look like stretched out cotton. In the above shot you might easily think it was taken from a boat in deep water, when in reality it was me in less than ankle deep water letting that few inches of water whoosh past me as the camera’s shutter stayed open for 1/6th of a second.
