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.
My rural land real estate work took me out to Valencia County again, but instead of being south between Las Lunas and Belen somewhere, this time I was 45+ minutes west of Albuquerque down I-40. Apparently, Valencia is a very big county! Mother Nature cooperated very well this evening producing fantastic skies with plenty of clouds. It was very, very windy at this property, but it was still a very peaceful and scenic work place for me for the evening. As always, my trusty Jeep Renegade Trailhawk got me down the dirt roads to reach this remote location.
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.
Coralee has been both a networking friend and a client for a long time here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Recently she gave me a great referral to photograph a hotel recently bought by one of her clients, as she is a commercial real estate broker. As a thank you to Coralee, I invited her to come to the JCP Home Studio for a complimentary headshot session. I really appreciate referrals, so I was glad to be able to make these great headshots for Coralee. Thank you Coralee for thinking of me!
It was a sort of homecoming for me to photograph AMG Speciality Hospital in southeast Albuquerque, New Mexico as I lived essentially next door to it for two years. New photos were wanted of both the interiors and exterior of the hospital, plus I was told, anything I thought would make a good photo, like the photo of the get well cards below. Only up on the third floor, the view of the Sandia Mountains was eye popping coming out of the elevator! In a side note, as I arrived going up in the elevator with me was a woman also going to the third floor. Some 2+ hours later as I was carrying all my photo gear now packed up back to the elevator having finished the shoot, there was the same woman! We both remarked how statistically improbable that was! That kind of thing fascinates me!
Anyone that has met Jessica knows she is a pretty huge The Nightmare Before Christmas fan. I could not even tell you the number of Nightmare themed items she owns, it has to be over 200! She often dresses up as Sally from the movie, and it just so happened that I already had a white seamless background setup from an earlier shoot as she was getting ready to go to a Halloween in August party (seems mighty close to actual Halloween, but that’s just me!) so that allowed for a quick cosplay photo shoot before she left! Jessica posed to retreat a few of Sally’s actual poses from the movie after having done her own makeup and donning her Sally dress. I think she looks great, but I may be biased!
Thanks to a great referral from networking friend Coralee (she sells commercial real estate), I had the opportunity to photograph the San Mateo Inn which is under new management and in the process of improving its branding and marketing, the first step was getting professional commercial photographs of the interior and exterior of the hotel. It is my custom whenever possible to start with the exteriors, because you never know when the weather may change, so if it is good, then shoot the exteriors first! After that I made my way inside to photograph the lobby and guest areas.
