Ô vision ! ô rêve !
-- from "The Pearl Fishers"
This past weekend and next week Opera Southwest -- our local (Albuquerque) opera company -- presents "The Pearl Fishers," an early opera by Georges Bizet, written in 1863 when he was 24. It's one of the few Bizet operas besides "Carmen" that is still performed.
When it premiered, audiences liked it but critics thought it wasn't original enough. (Hey, he was only 24!) The libretto is generally considered to be weak (not his fault - he didn't write it), and Bizet was still finding his voice as a composer, but the opera contains some wonderful music, including the duet "Au fond du temple saint" (the so-called "Pearl Fishers Duet") which, according to some stories, was performed at Bizet's funeral; it's now a standard concert show-piece. (To see/hear it performed by Bryn Terfel and Andrea Bocelli, click here.)
Through a Corrales friend and fellow photographer, last Thursday night he and I had the opportunity to photograph a dress rehearsal of the performance.
We had the freedom to roam backstage,
on stage before the performance . . .
and after . . .
. . . in the orchestra pit . . .
. . . and even to the edge of the stage during the performance.
For a photographer it was a wonderful opportunity: colorful sets, costumes, and lighting . . .
grand, dramatic gestures . . .
and at the heart of it all, great singing!
(Of course, you'll have to go to the performance to hear that! For information about the Opera Southwest performances, click here.)
To make it even more interesting, this was all happening in real time, so I was constantly having to adjust my camera settings, find the best vantage points, and compose my shots on the fly. It was like simultaneously being the director and the cameraman for a four-hour live television production.
It was a total rush, and I loved it!
For you photographers, I was working without a flash (which would have been useless in the auditorium anyway) and at the limits of my Canon EOS 7D's capabilities: ISOs in the 4-5,000 range; f-stops in the 4.0-5.6 range; and shutter speeds 1/80th to 1/100th of a second. I used a 75-300mm telephoto (f/4.0-5.6) mounted on a tripod for some shots, but I really didn't like being tethered to the tripod, so for most shots I roamed with my 18-135mm wide-angle lens (f/3.5-5.6). As a result, the image quality isn't great, but I cared more about capturing the power and emotion of the acting and the music.
You can see these and more images from "The Pearl Fishers" at my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.
Enjoy!
. . . the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
-- T. S. Eliot, "East Coker, " Four Quartets
Saturday, March 15, began with a rarely-seen phenomenon in these parts: fog.
But it burned off pretty quickly, leaving a diadem of clouds on the crest of the Sandia Mountains. (This is literally the view out our back door.)
The clouds came and went all day, and by mid-afternoon the mountain had disappeared in a thick blanket of cloud:
Two hours later, the clouds lifted to a heavy overcast, leaving the mountain with a new coating of snow:
And then, just before sunset, I looked again. There was a patch of sunlight . . .
A gap had opened in the west between the horizon and the overcast ceiling . . .
and I knew that as the sun set, that patch of sunlight would move eastward toward the mountain. So out the door I went, camera in hand, across the road and up a small hill about 100 yards from our house.
Along the way, a neighbor's fence caught the sun (and my eye) . . .
And that window of sunlight kept moving toward the mountain . . .
As the sunlight moved up the face of the mountain, the wind picked up from the north (left to right in these images), and began to blow the clouds that had settled on the crest.
Then the whole front ridge of the mountain was illuminated, and I took the shot. (Six shots, actually: this is a panorama of six vertical images stitched together in Photoshop.)
The sun set and the earth's shadow moved up, leaving only the top of the mountain lit . . .
And then it was over . . .
Sometimes you just have to wait for it . . .
You can see these images in a larger format at my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.
Enjoy!
The breaking wave
And the muscle as it contracts
Obey the same law.
Delicate line gathers the body's total strength
In a bold balance.
Shall my soul meet so severe a curve,
Journeying on its way to form?
-- Dag Hammarskjold
In the remote wilderness of far northern Arizona, there's an amazing geological formation known as "The Wave." It's made of lithified sandstone which was compacted from sand dunes about 190 million years ago during the Jurassic period when the area was an erg on the western edge of the supercontinent Pangea. The dunes were later covered with other materials which, beginning about 15 million years ago, were eroded away by water and wind, exposing the fantastic stratification of the sand.
To learn more about the geology of The Wave, you can read the Wikipedia entry by clicking here.
Thanks to the work of the eons, The Wave is a visual feast, and a significant destination for photographers. I first heard of it from my WGBH colleague, Elizabeth Benjes, and knew I had to go there. But it isn't easy to get to. It's in the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness area which straddles the Arizona-Utah border. There are no marked hiking trails; no phone service; no drinking water sources; and very little protection from the sun and weather. Three people died on the journey to/from The Wave last year, including a 27-year-old mother celebrating her fifth wedding anniversary.
In addition to being in a remote area, access to The Wave is regulated by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) by means of a lottery system, principally to limit wear and tear on the fragile sandstone environment and, to a certain extent, to weed out the casual (and unprepared) hikers. Only 20 people per day are granted permits. Ten permits are available for each day via an online lottery system four months in advance; the other 10 are available at a walk-in (day of) lottery at the BLM visitor center in Kanab, Utah, about 50 miles from The Wave. Every month there are thousands of applicants; while the odds are better than winning the Power Ball lottery, they're still not good. People try for years to snag a permit.
So I was thrilled when my friend, Duke Breitenbach, called on Friday of Super Bowl weekend to say that he had gone to Kanab for the walk-in lottery and had scored passes for 2 people on Saturday and 4 people on Sunday -- did I want one?
DID I WANT ONE??!!! Heck, yeah!!!
Duke lives in a suburb of St. George, Utah, and was the photography lead on an ill-timed Road Scholar trip I took last fall to (not) visit the national parks of Utah when the federal government shut down. (I still haven't posted the story and pictures from that trip -- yikes!) Duke and the other tour leaders made the best of a bad situation by finding great alternative photogenic locations on the same itinerary. Just goes to show . . . you never know when something bad will lead to something good.
As I mentioned above, getting to The Wave is not easy. On Saturday, I drove 325 miles from Albuquerque to Flagstaff, AZ, with a little side trip to the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park . . .
and a brief stop in Winslow as a pilgrimage in honor of the Eagles' song from the 70s, "Take It Easy."
(Can you spot the error in the trompe l'oeil image of the girl -- My Lord! -- in the flatbed Ford?)
I spent the night in Flagstaff, then got up very early Super Bowl Sunday morning to head for the rendezvous point where I would join three photographers from St. George who had the permit and knew the way to The Wave.
I left Flagstaff at 5:30a, and it was 9 degrees. By 7:00a, it was dawn and I could begin to make out the landscape that, up to that point, had been pitch black -- very few lights and even fewer cars on the road.
I watched the rising sunlight strike the Vermilion Cliffs which are the eastern edge of the Paria Plateau . . .
then drove north to the Navajo Bridge across the Colorado River about 30 miles north of where it enters the Grand Canyon . . .
then back south along the eastern and southern edge of Vermilion Cliffs . . .
 |
| Yes, that's my car . . . |
. . . around to the rendezvous point on the southwest corner of the plateau 150 miles from Flagstaff. Here's a map to show the area and my route:
About 9:15a the Utah contingent arrived, and I jumped into their rugged 4-wheel Jeep for a 20-mile drive on a rutted, washerboarded dirt road that runs below the western edge of the plateau to the trailhead.
An hour later, we arrived at the trailhead, signed the log book, and started walking.
It's about a 3-mile hike each way, over loose sand and sandstone called "slickrock" -- which is, I suppose, slick when wet, but otherwise is good for hiking and great for mountain biking. The weather was great, too: about 38 degrees, sunny with occasional passing waves of cirrostratus and cirrocumulus clouds.
 |
| This is slickrock. |
Along the way, we saw one amazing rock formation after another . . .
including some that looked like soft-serve ice cream . . .
The terrain is rugged and desolate . . .
Little wonder people get lost and die out here, especially in the summer.
You cannot see The Wave until you are right on top of it because it is hidden within a steep mountainside (circled area below). If you look closely at the image below, you can see a person standing at about the 4 o'clock position inside the circle.
But after almost two hours of hiking, we approached the last quarter mile, an uphill push of sand and sandstone.
Finally, we could see the entrance. (Hmmm, that person is still standing there. Wonder if it's the same one we saw from afar? Or maybe it's just a statue?) One of our party had been struggling for breath all along the hike, so he stayed behind while three of us went up.
As we approached the entrance area, we began to see the striations in the sandstone . . .
Then the ground began to tilt and The Wave began to take shape . . .
There was a sort of entry portal . . .
And then we were in . . .
We walked uphill and then looked back toward the entrance (the gap that those people are walking into):
The Wave forms a sort of bowl. To give you some perspective and scale, here are a few shots moving further up the mountainside away from the entrance:
(Arrow below shows where the photographer was standing in the pictures above.)
Inside The Wave the views are fantastic and even a little disorienting . . .
Eventually, we had to head back.
Because we had left one of our group down at the base of The Wave area, we spent less than an hour actually at The Wave. The time from my first image in The Wave to my last was 44 minutes, during which I took 160 shots.
My round-trip distance traveled was about 1,000 miles. To put this in perspective for those who live on the East Coast, it was like driving from Boston to Philadelphia (Corrales to Flagstaff); Philadelphia to Falls Church, VA (Flagstaff to rendezvous point); Falls Church, VA, to Dulles Airport on a dirt road (rendezvous point to trailhead); then hiking 3.2 miles over rugged terrain; then doing it all in reverse over a 3-day period.
But it was a great adventure, and one I would do again if the opportunity came my way. You can see more images from the trip at my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.
Enjoy!
