Sidetracked Charley

I do try to support local businesses but I no longer ski, have a complete stock of Angel Fire t-shirts, and cannot figure out the open/close schedule of our restaurants in off season. In spite of gas being 20 to 30 cents more per gallon than Taos I usually fill up on this side of the mountain unless I need to go to Taos for another reason. Since the Taos branch of Artisan's art supply closed these trips had become less frequent. As a solo household I often just picked up food stuffs at the local store. The Valley Market was recently bought and remodeled by Lowe's, a Texas chain. The remodel enlarged the store but most of the new footage has been taken up by a much expanded liquor section which is arranged so it cannot be avoided. My favorite brand of ice cream is gone. Organic foods are relegated to one half aisle across from wines. Whole wheat flour cannot be found. Their bread is that white foamy stuff that when wadded up makes a great cleaner for paintings. And your abili...

Painted Desert After I graduated from high school my father gave us the grand tour. Not the grand tour of a year in Europe which some of my later college friends enjoyed but two weeks with the family seeing the parks of the intermountain west. It was an ambitious list of must see's and early on two parks got cut: Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. The argument was we lived in a painted desert and that you could buy petrified wood everywhere. So for years both remained on my must see list if for no other reason that they got cut. But there always seemed to be grander parks to see or more important places to go. But this vacation with my sister I at last made it to both. Let me say for the record that you can buy petrified wood everywhere. But the colors and scope of the painted desert, which continues into the petrified forest park, is not to be seen just anywhere. And for a photographer it should not be missed. I really want to go back. Mostly because the light changes ...

This last year seems to have gone so fast. And the last two months like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. I have changed so many things it is hard to find equilibrium it seems. And it isn't just me but the world around me as we race from fall to winter in New Mexico. I normally post a weekly blog here on Mondays and just this morning (in the hours before dawn) realized it was Wednesday. Vacation with my sister begins tomorrow. We are off to photograph more of our beloved Colorado Plateau. This time the southern edge of it. Have cameras and laptops and will travel. Only this time we are doing it on day trips or overnight turn arounds. Works best with fur kids and changeable weather. I need the vacation. But not because it is a change of pace. Pace has changed a lot all on its own. A bit of boredom would be nice. No computer crashes, no extreme allergic reactions with a pet, no more friends being diagnosed with terminal illnesses, etc.  Same oh, same oh sounds very nice actually. But ...

Storm clouds I have been spending time with my Nikon D90 and my newest version of post processing software: Corel Paintshop Pro 4X Ultimate. So much time you would think I was enrolled in a post graduate level photography course. And in a way I am. I am using other photographers I know as my instructors and dissertation committee. I consider the things they post as assignments and take to the street or computer. Terry Atkins Rowe  has posted several very illuminating links on our D90 Ladies Club page on Facebook. And they have served as my text book. A recent one she posted was on achieving good black and white photographs. Frankly since I left my darkroom at college I have not been successful with B&W. And having my sister and friend, Terry, excel at it has been a bit intimidating. My natural tendency is to quit the table when I don't like the game or lose a lot. But this is about me, my camera and my computer. It is an inner competition with self and not j...

Facebook Report Card I don't do apps on Facebook so why I got sucked in with this one when I was tagged by a friend I haven't a clue. But once I had it posted on my page it immediately sucked me in. And it has not been a happy experience. Report cards were a major thing when I was a kid. We had to excel. And let me say for the record that this card would have been a major event at our house. C's and D's were never tolerated. Regardless of the fact that in the end I have a B average. Let me explain they have the friend number wrong. I have more friends (well, a few more) than that. But my grade school report cards often had a special note from the teacher that I did not play well with others. Not that I was mean or anything. I just found my classmates on the whole boring. I would rather sit in a corner of the playground and draw or write. Doing that in class because I found the teacher boring often also earned me the classic line, "Does not use time wisely...

Aspens turning First my sister found out she had won first place for one of her photographs in the 35th International show in Raton. So she made plans to drive up Friday morning after she got off work. Then the repaired computer at last arrived on Thursday. Its hard drive had been replaced so what was once suppose to be Charley VI and became Charley VII because Charley VI would not boot up should probably have been renamed Charley VIII because it has a totally new mind that I have been trying to set up. But I digress again. Friday came too fast and we drove out to Raton to pick up my sister's award. Her first big award for her photography so she was soaring for sure. Then Saturday we once again went four wheeling with her Jeep Rubicon. The Aspens were turning. Where oh where did the year go? And my weekend with my sister was all too fleeting. But she taught me to use the cloning tool on my photo editing program. How to successfully shoot macro pictures. And to microwave scr...

  Moving does not mean packing up the household belongings and hitting the road. As a child with a father in the military, and then later in my youth working for a major construction management company I got to redo my life on a regular basis via United Van Lines. Home was just where my parents lived. And given their lives not anywhere I had lived often. Now I have lived in the same house for almost 15 years and in the same geographic area for almost 23. I until recently would image moving house just to not have to be trapped. But I have at last discovered that movement can be a rather static thing. It can be just a shift in attitude. Or turning just a bit to be aware there is another path to follow. It can be not calling the same friends for lunch or belonging to the same board of directors. It can be like the newly emerged butterfly just quietly pumping its wings full so it can fly - a movement so still as to be almost no movement at all at first...