Beacon, Santa Fe

People come to Santa Fe for a lot of reasons, most are just visiting. In fact, tourism supports about 78% of the local economy, give or take. . . it's an interesting small city. I'm taking pictures to illustrate some of what I see and some of what I think about.

Still in Santa Fe

 

 The above is a detail crop of a much, much larger image that I did titled "Winter Promise, Madrid" and while I do a fair amount of editing my photos I rarely "paint" to the degree I've done here. Really I have not seriously painted since I was a teenager. But I am getting inspired to paint, draw or sculpt from my exposure to all the wonderful art around us here. Below is the wider view;

Winter Promise, Madrid by Paul Hood

This is a very large old cottonwood tree on Canyon Road which is the original art gallery district here in Santa Fe. This district began as just a row of houses where artists lived and began putting out their own artwork for sale on the street. It's a bit more developed now as professional galleries, the rent has consequently been driven up and few artists can afford to live right on the row and sell their own work. I was inspired to produce this image of what has to be the oldest tree in the area, but I added in a red root structure spreading across and obliterating the road. The roots appearing as rivulets of red paint, or blood, or flame depending on how you see it.


Pilgrimage, Santa Fe by Paul Hood

And in this shot I was lucky enough to have somebody walk into frame while i was shooting. He's way in the background but it makes for a more interesting shot.

Santa Fe

 Partway to Santa Fe we stopped over in a Motel 6. We basically drove in a blizzard, and it was a bit nerve wracking. The following day we drove on into Santa Fe and there were several wrecked and stranded cars on the median, including one precariously balanced on it's side in the snow. Yeesh. We could've picked a better time to move, but we got there.

One of the sights outside of Santa Fe in a tiny town called Chimayo.

More photos from New Mexico

Oh but this one (above ) is local to Arizona. Just a night shot where I used a 30 second exposure. Moonless night but just after sunset so there was still some light in the sky. This is unretouched and I think I shot it at about F7. Not a serious art piece, just goofing around. The strangest part about this shot is not visible within the frame; that Sheryl asked me, just for kicks, what if she walked through the shot, real slow. She did, very slowly and even stopped over by the stairs near the middle light. Nothing, she's completely invisible.

This one is in New Mexico as is the one below. I took a previous shot of this on a different day from a different angle. I really like it. It's available for sale but we're coming to the conclusion that showcasing these photos at 600 pixels or 650 pixels across just does not cut it. Since I've been a victim of photo theft, I'm leery of showing larger works online. I hate doing watermarks.
I am not be above using the invisible kind which track the file all over the Internet, wherever it may wander. I'm also not finding Imagekind to be a successful venue for selling my work. We hear that the print quality is great.

This here symbol, it's a sun symbol, was one of few things we saw in Albuquerque with any visual appeal. It's our fault though, because we did not even see the downtown. ALBQ is big, real big, sprawls all over the place. We really prefer Santa Fe, or Taos, or Madrid, and some other smaller towns whose names I do not remember. At least if we were in Taos there are high quality and very competitive print shops there. Many options.