Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Visit

 

One of my favorite places in the New Mexico badlands is the area called Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah.  It's filed with hoodoos and strange features, and always repays repeat visits for photography.  Here are posts about previous trips:  April 2021, March 2021, October 2020, and July 2019.

This trip took place in late October, 2021, with my friend Alan Postelnek and another photographer, Igal Brener.  Our ultimate goal was to photograph the Milky Way on one of the last times of the year when the Galactic Center was visible.  But we had most of an afternoon to wander around and enjoy the interesting features of the place, like these:

Not sure what animal made this track:

Then it was time for Golden Hour . . .

. . . followed by Blue Hour:

and then deep Blue Hour:

As it got darker, I experimented with light painting on the hoodoo in the image above with a long exposure in the dark.  Here's my best attempt:

(By the way, that bright star in the image is Venus.)

Meanwhile, Alan and Igal set up their cameras and off-camera supplemental lights to illuminate some foreground features for the Milky Way shot:

Finally, I used my camera with the lighting set-up that they had arranged to get my own Milky Way image:

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

Enjoy!

Two New England Cemeteries

 

Last October, when it seemed relatively safe to travel out of state, my wife and I went to visit our older son and his family in Williamstown, Massachusetts, whom we had not seen in person since early in 2019.

Williamstown is the home of Williams College, where our son and his wife are professors in the Economics department.  

It's a classic New England college town, with landmark museums . . .

churches . . .

and educational facilities . . .

all nestled in the green rolling hills and forests of the Berkshires in rural western Massachusetts.

Naturally, Williamstown and its larger neighbor to the east, North Adams, have very old, well-tended, and photogenic cemeteries, which I was able to photograph.  I spent most of my time in two of them:  Westlawn  in Williamstown . . .

and Hillside in North Adams.

I enjoy exploring cemeteries for the stories the headstones, grave markers, and monuments tell as well as for their visual interest.  The lighting (at different times of day or year) and the spatial arrangement and conditions of the stones provide a range of moods and drama.  Here are some examples.  

First, from Westlawn Cemetery in Williamstown:

And from Hillside Cemetery in North Adams:

Finally, as I was reviewing and processing my images, there were some that I thought might be more dramatic or interesting in black-and-white or in stylized sepia, rather than in color.  Here are a few examples with two (or three) versions of the same image . . . you be the judge:

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!