A Ton of Bricks

 

A few weeks ago, I went with one of my photo buddies, Barry, to photograph at a brick-making factory in the South Valley of Albuquerque.  We were escorted around the facility by the manager, who explained all the steps in making bricks.

The process begins with clay sourced from two different locations in central New Mexico, plus flawed bricks discarded from the manufacturing process.

The raw material is dumped into grinding machinery in a building we didn't enter, due to the massive amount of dust.  Then water is added to the fine powder to make a malleable solid kind of like Play-Doh, which is then shaped and cut into bricks by hundred-year-old machinery on an assembly line.

Here are a couple of the interchangeable devices used to cut the raw material into different size bricks:

After being stacked, the raw bricks are moved to giant insulated kilns for drying.  It takes a day and a half to slowly raise the temperature inside the kiln, heated by natural gas furnaces, and another day and a half to cool down.

In the images above, the things hanging down are canvas tubes used for circulating the hot air around the racks of bricks.  They struck me as very creepy, like lynched Ku Klux Klan members . . . so I spent extra time photographing them.  Here's my . . . favorite? . . . in color:

. . . and in black-and-white:

Still creepy.

Here's the door to one of the kilns:

After drying, the bricks are moved to an area where they are bundled by machine -- strapped or sometimes shrink-wrapped -- for delivery:

Rejects are conveyed to a bin where they are collected for re-use:

The packaged bricks are moved out into the yard for pickup . . . 

. . . and then the process begins all over again.

Along the way, I captured a lot of interesting patterns and textures:

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

Enjoy!

Storm Chasing in Central New Mexico

 

Here in New Mexico, we rarely see those magnificent, photogenic supercell storms like the ones in the Great Plains, so we have to be content with smaller storms.

Late last month, weather forecasts seemed favorable for some isolated thunderstorms in central and southeastern New Mexico.  My friend, Alan, and I opted for the possibilities in central NM, closer to home (round trip roughly 230 miles), doable in half a day.

By noon RadarScope was showing a couple of promising cells about 30 miles southwest of Vaughn, moving west to east.  So we had time for lunch at Penny's Diner . . .

. . . then drove a few miles south of Vaughn on US 285 to be in position for the approaching storm cell.

When found a good viewpoint about 1:30, there was already a cell nearby, but it didn't look very interesting (on the left in the photo below).  The cell we were interested in was about 10 miles directly west of our position (circled).  

BTW, this is the same area where almost exactly two years earlier we saw a pretty good cell and, briefly, a tornado.  To see images from that trip, click here.

We watched and waited (and pushed the shutter button) as the cell moved directly toward us.

While we waited, we saw this on the highway behind us:

Any guesses about what it is?

Meanwhile, the storm cell was coming right toward us . . .

Detail from left side of the photo above this one.

. . . so we decided to move around to the side of it for a different view by driving 15 miles back to the northwest near Encino:

Here's what it looked like from the north side as it traveled from west to east (right to left in the three images below):

Clearly there was a lot of turbulence, which you can see in the photos above, but no rotation that would spawn a tornado.  

To give you a better sense of the turbulence, I zoomed into the heart of the cell.  This photo is enhanced by processing to increase the contrast and detail; it's my "shot of the day."

It reminds me of some of the illustrations by French graphic artist Gustave Doré (1832-1883):

As we headed for home, I looked back at the storm from a distance:

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

Enjoy!

Rainbow Sky

 

Yesterday was a day of heavy overcast and light rain alternating with clear blue New Mexico sky . . .

6:58 am

8:17 am

The waves of dark and clear were the remnants of tropical storm Alvin, which spun up in the eastern Pacific on the west coast of Mexico a few days ago, then blew north through Arizona and New Mexico.

As sunset approached, the western sky was clearing as the heavy clouds moved east over the Sandia Mountains, so I grabbed my camera to photograph our house and some yucca plants against the dramatic dark sky in "golden hour" light.

While photographing one of the yucca plants, I noticed a light curving line in the dark sky . . .

. . . and realized it was a rainbow forming right before my eyes:

As the sun sank lower in the west, the rainbow faded, leaving only the left and right ends visible:

But as the rainbow faded, a new show was beginning.  The setting sun was now illuminating the departing overcast cloud layer.  

Here's the view looking west and up as the trailing edge of the clouds was passing overhead:

Looking toward the Sandia Mountains in the east . . .

Looking northeast . . .

and southeast . . .

At last, the sun dropped below the horizon, leaving soft colors on the clouds:

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

Enjoy!