Thanksgiving Weekend Ramble

 

Itching to get outdoors on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, my friend, Alan, and I hopped in the car and headed out for a serendipity photography ramble.  On the proposed itinerary were three very small villages south of Santa Fe:  Lamy, Galisteo, and Cerillos.

After lunch on the outskirts of Santa Fe, we drove on to Lamy (pronounced "LAY-mee"), so named for Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy, who served as Bishop of the Santa Fe diocese from 1853 to 1885.  He was the model for the fictional archbishop in Willa Cather's novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop.

Today, Lamy's principal reason for existence is the Amtrak train station closest to Santa Fe.  We happened to arrive just in time to see the Southwest Chief roll in on its way from Chicago to Los Angeles.

Besides the daily Amtrak train, there's also a wildly-painted tourist train that runs on the 18-mile spur from Lamy to Santa Fe, featuring themed events from wine tasting to outlaw ambush.  To visit their website, click here.

The station was decorated in New Mexico holiday style.

Here are a couple of images from a visit to Lamy in 2021:

And watch out for the loose caboose!

From Lamy we headed 8 miles southwest to Galisteo, another small village (pop. maybe 200).  Not far from the village is the Cerro Pelon Movie Ranch, where pieces of a lot of western movies were filmed, including Young Guns, 3:10 to Yuma, Silverado, and The Cowboys.

We poked around for things to photograph and found this one-lane bridge:

We were apprehensive about driving across it, but while we were photographing it, another car came along and drove over it, so we figured it was safe enough . . . and lived to tell the tale.

On our way out of town we noticed an old overgrown cemetery up on a hill above the town, so of course we had to stop and photograph it.  The cemetery was enclosed by a rock wall, and the front gate was locked with a padlock, so we chose not to enter, and photographed it from outside the wall.  Here are a few views:

Our last destination was Cerillos, originally a mining town for nearby deposits of turquoise, gold, silver, and other minerals.  There is evidence of Native American mining in the hills surrounding the village as far back as 700-900 CE; in the 16th and 17th centuries the mines were controlled by Spanish colonizers using indigenous people as slaves.  

After the end of the Spanish-American War in 1848, land grants were taken from the Spanish owners and reopened to Anglo-American settlers.  By 1880, the area surrounding Cerillos had a population of 1,200 - 1,500, and eventually there were over 2,000 registered mines.  By 1900, however, the mines were exhausted and shutting down, and, like many other New Mexico mining towns, Cerillos began its long slow decline, exacerbated by the Depression and World War II.  Today, there are only about 200 people in the town and environs.

There is still a very active and beautiful church in Cerillos -- St. Joseph's, established in 1922.  We arrived as the sun was sinking fast in the west, but it provided beautiful light for photographing the church.

Here's the "Homage to Ansel Adams" version, complete with moonrise:

If you would like to see these images in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!

Dia de los Muertos 2025

 

Last Sunday afternoon my friend Alan and I hopped down to Albuquerque's predominately Hispanic South Valley neighborhood to stroll among the costumed characters for this year's Dia de los Muertos celebration.

The event, held at the Westside Community Center, is great for portrait photography -- all you have to do is complement the costumes and ask if you can photograph them.  Everyone says OK.

The calavera face painting and masks ranged from simple to elaborate . . .

. . . and the costumes ranged from whimsical to serious . . .

. . . traditional to steampunk:

Most would dutifully pose, but a few would "strike a pose" unasked:

This year there seemed to be a lot of elaborate headgear:

The most stunning was a woman I photographed last year . . .

who came with an awesome new costume.  It was all black-and-white, so I had to go that way too.

Finally, there was always time for a selfie:

If you would like to see these images (and more) in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!

The MiG-21 Project

 

Last month my younger son, Drew, and I spent a weekend in Seattle to attend a family-related memorial service.  During the non-family time one afternoon we visited the Museum of Flight south of downtown Seattle, and encountered an unexpected, amazing piece of art.

But first . . .

We took an early nonstop from Albuquerque to SeaTac, and with clear skies, low-angle morning light, and a window seat, I got some nice images of the rugged mountains about 80 miles southeast of Salt Lake City . . .

. . . and a great view of Mt. Ranier (and Mt. St. Helens in the distance) as we descended into the Seattle area:

After brunch at a snazzy, retro diner in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood, we drove back down I-5 to the Museum of Flight at the King County Airport, a few miles north of SeaTac.  Drew and I had visited the museum on a previous trip to Seattle -- you can read about that visit here.  On that visit, the Aviation Pavilion, a major section section of the museum housed in a covered open-air structure, was closed.  Fortunately, on this visit it was open, and we spent most of our time there.

Photo from the Museum of Flight website

The Aviation Pavilion houses 19 rare and unique commercial and military aircraft, including the first jet-powered Air Force One (a Boeing 707); the Boeing 727 (complete with a description of the legend of D.B. Cooper); the 737, 747, and the 787 Dreamliner, as well as the only Concorde on the West Coast.

Needless to say, the size and placement of the aircraft, coupled with the pavilion's mix of light and shadows, were not ideal conditions for photography.

Among the military aircraft are a B-29 and a B-17 (the latter the subject of the anti-war poem "The Death of the Ball-Turret Gunner" which you can read here).  You can see the ball-turret on the underside of this B-17, just to the left of the lower propeller blade of the engine in the foreground of this image.  

I was visually fascinated by the cowling and blades of the Rolls-Royce turbofan engines that power the 787.

But tucked away behind the 747 and 787, at the farthest end of the pavilion, was a very unusual aircraft:  a Russian MiG-21 fighter jet completely covered in a riot of colorful patterns.

The patterns are not painted on; they are made of tens of millions of tiny beads covering virtually every square inch of the plane.

The armaments . . .

. . . the wheels . . .

. . . even the inside of the engine exhaust nozzle . . .

. . . are all wrapped with beads!

The decorations are the brainchild of South African artist Ralph Ziman.  The aircraft is the centerpiece of a 5-year, multidisciplinary project transforming a decommissioned, Cold War-era, Soviet-designed MiG-21 jet fighter into a work of art.  

"The aim of the MiG-21 Project," according to Ziman, "is to take the most mass-produced supersonic fighter aircraft and turn it from a machine of war into something that looks beautiful, changing the meaning of it."

In addition to the decorated jet, Ziman and his team created "Afrofuturistic flight suits" with custom regalia made from objets trouvés and repurposed parts of the MiG to complement the beaded jet.  The costumes are described in the exhibit as "whimsical" and "playful," but to me they appeared threatening and dangerous, perhaps due to how they were displayed -- inside plexiglass cases in a very dark room -- or perhaps due to how they conjured contemporary images of ICE stormtroopers.

Notwithstanding all that, the beaded jet became my "teacup" for the trip (IYKYK).  I walked around it more than once, and made over 150 images of the plane.  Here are some of my favorite views:

You can read more about the MiG-21 Project, and see a fascinating video of how the bead coverings were created -- a long and painstaking process -- by clicking here.

Of course, I couldn't leave the museum without taking a picture of our favorite aircraft:  the SR-71, this time poised above the museum floor set up for a large private event.

On the flight back to Albuquerque, I captured another great view of Mt. Ranier (with Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Hood in the distance); the Cascades of Washington state; a Delta Airlines 757 flying below us above the Great Salt Lake coming in for a landing in Salt Lake City; and the confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers in Canyonlands National Park in southeastern Utah.

View looking SW; Colorado River comes in from the bottom of the image; Green River from right.

Enjoy!