I recently went to Las Cruces, New Mexico on a rural land photography assignment. On the way back we made a detour to nearby Deming, New Mexico. Jessica is good at finding odd places to visit, often from a website called Atlas Obscura. We went to two places definitely deserving of the description obscure!
I learned a lot at this ribbon cuttingevent in Albuquerque, New Mexico for Kangen Water. I was surprised that according to their acidity metrics, tap water is better for you than the two most popular bottled water makers! The Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce were very good hosts once again. If I lived closer to Kangen, I would be a member of their store where you can bring in your own water jugs and get them refilled. There is also a counter top machine for sale to purify the water right in your own home, but for me, it is just a little out of budget at the moment!
I have been flying my DJI Mavic Prodrone all over New Mexico making dozens of 4K videos. But what to do about places the drone cannot fly? Or if I wanted to actually record the sound of the place I am recording video of? The iPhone 8 records good 4K video, but if you just handhold it the video is all choppy. In my search for a smooth solution, I discovered the DJI Osmo Mobile 2 smart phone gimbal. However, it was sold out everywhere. Finally it was back in stock and mine arrived just last week!
On the way to Las Cruces, New Mexico for a rural land photography shoot, I got to make my second visit to Elephant Butte Lake. This was actually the very first non-Albuquerque place I visited when I first moved to New Mexico in February 2017. Therefore, this is my only "old memory" of New Mexico (technically, in 2000 I visited Roswell and Carlsbad Caverns and Bandelier National Monument too, but that's a whole other lifetime).
I long dreamt of Malibu, in particular its miles of coastline offering near infinite sunset views over the vast Pacific Ocean. In December 2017 I got to fulfill that dream, but just for one sunset. At least it was a great one and though it is a rare thing in life, expectations long daydreamed about were met and surpassed. Some day I will get to see more sunsets in Malibu, perhaps even from my own back door.
The Biz Gratis networking event put on by the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce every month is one of my favorite events to photograph. This time I was more portrait focused as I used my Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G lens to create shallow depth of field photos even in a very small, very crowded space. The overhead canopy made beautiful diffused light just like a softbox in a photo studio further allowing me to make candidevent photographs not normally possible!
I met Lisa at a BNI networking event some weeks ago where we first discussed making new headshots for her. Like many people that I photograph, she was normally not thrilled to have her photo taken. She even said she'd rather be at the dentist that morning than at the JCP Home Studio in Albuquerque, New Mexico for her professional business headshot photo shoot!