It was not at all like how I thought my first home buying experience would be, but after a 3-month long ordeal, I am now a first time homeowner! We had been renting this house for a year and agreed to sign another 1-year lease. Well, just before we could do that the owner decides to sell the house! So it is either buy the house, or move! And that is how I became a home owner. No being courted by real estate agents, no discovering your dream home, no holding a sold sign, just kind of happened out of necessity. It’s a great house, in a fantastic location in Albuquerque, and will continue to be the home of Jason Collin Photography for the near future. Too bad we cannot even have a house warming party due to Covid-19!
Smokey the Bear spokesanimal for preventing forest fires!
A recent commercial interior photo shoot took me to Ruidoso, New Mexico for the firs time, which in turn by taking the scenic route took me to Capitan, New Mexico which to my great surprise is the home of the real Smokey the Bear! Who knew? Smokey has his own historic park detailing his life story. His life definitely started out very sad, being orphaned in a forest fire and being found burned and clinging to a tree (see photo below). This early tragedy led him to a life as an ambassador for the forest serivce and a spokesanimal for preventing forest fires. He served in this role for 25 years! What an amazing story and to discover it right here in New Mexico.
Abandoned in part Lamy Train Station in New Mexico
Even in very, very small towns in New Mexico, one can still find active train stations picking up and carrying passengers in a more relaxed way of traveling long distances. Such is the case with Lamy Train Station that still has two Amtrack trains stop by each day. However, much of the station is now abandoned and is the final resting place of rusting train cars, engines, and cabooses. I have long enjoyed exploring abandoned places, or haikyo, so it was a very pleasant surprise to get to glance through the window of an old train car and wonder when it was last in service, and as always, what stories would it be able to tell?
Atlas Obscura is a great website for finding hidden gems and odd places when traveling. This is how Art Cartopia Museum came on my radar on a recent rural land photography shoot in Trinidad, Colorado. This museum is free (though donations encouraged) and dog friendly indoors and out, and open during Covid-19 for guests wearing masks. What can you see at this museum? Art cars of all kinds, styles, and designs! A van covered in eyeballs? Yes. A huge skeleton driving on top of a car? Yes. A dentist’s dream (or nightmare?) car? Yes. Oddities abound in car form. The owner as one would expect is friendly, a character, and makes you feel like you are the very first visitor ever to the museum, which to me is always a sign of a great host, making you feel like you are the first visitor ever!
Like many, many people, I got a bike during the pandemic because there are no more team sports, so to get exercise out of the house, a road bike is a great way to see scenery and burn calories. I have actually been on bikes of different kinds all my life, starting with getting second place in the New England BMW Championships in 1982, to cycling 100km in Japan and camping in 2007. The torn ACL I suffered in 2015 put an end I thought to my time on a bike as I could not even get my knee to bend enough to pedal. I sold my bike and gave away all my gear. However, after a while, my knee did get better and I could run and jump again, and as you can see from these photos, ride a bike again! It is also my nature that when i do something, I do it all the way (within reason). So where in April I was doing relatively flat rides of 25 miles, just 3 months later that tuns into riding my bike to the highest peak in the area, Sandia Crest!
Almost exactly two years later, I returned to Quarai Mission Ruins for a second visit (see first visit photos), this time as part of a drive with the BMW Car Club of America, New Mexico Chapter. I actually did not know for sure we would be stopping at these ruins, so it was a nice surprise for me to see them again. A lot has changed in two years, as I did not have the car i drove their in then, and I was still shooting with a DSLR camera, not the most advanced Sony mirrorless camera there is. One thing that did not change, though, was Quarai itself. Still not a single cloud in the sky there to enhance my photos, so I used the sun to create lens flares to add drama to the tall stone walls of the mission. Have you been to Quarai? Let me know in the comments below.
We went up to Santa Fe, New Mexico to see a Guinness Book of World Records setting whale! How is that possible with Santa Fe not only being landlocked, but also mountainous? Well, it is a whale made of recycled plastic on the campus of Santa Fe Community College. Regular readers of Jason Collin Photography will note how many times Atlas Obscura sites are featured in my photo stories, and thanks again to that site (and for Jessica finding it), we had a whale of an adventure hundreds of miles from the ocean. See the photos below to learn what makes Ethyl the Whale so special. Want to visit this site yourself? Check out the map at the end of the photo story.
