Blog Archives
Bright Arroyo
Sometimes I hear people say there’s nothing to see in New Mexico.
Those people are wrong.
near San Ysidro, New Mexico
photographed 9.8.2020
Smoke Settling into the Canyon
Normally, this view goes on just about forever.
A devastating wildfire season on the west coast gave us a much different view, with smoke settling into the canyons and giving everything a weird, muted look. (This was shot at mid-day.) But you know how I am: at least the situation gave me something different than the usual shots of bright blue skies, vivid red rocks, and a blue-green river, and I wasn’t too disappointed about that. “Anyone can get those shots,” I said to myself in a tone that was probably too smug for the actual situation.
But what I learned is that from a photographic standpoint, smoke doesn’t really add that much to an image. And I was reminded to stop being so damn smug, already.
Dead Horse Point State Park, Utah
photographed 9.7.2020
Two Ships
The majestic rock formations were made blurry by the thick plume of smoke that had drifted from the west coast.
(They are called the Monitor and the Merrimac, decidedly Eurocentric titles for a region that was inhabited by the ancient ones for sort of a while before Europeans arrived to re-name everything.)
near Moab, Utah
photographed 9.7.2020
Open Range
As much as we loved the Palouse, we did have to go home.
The day we drove from Park City, Utah, to Farmington, New Mexico, was a day of extremely smoky skies; the smoke obscured almost all of what was there to look at. But if I’d been enchanted by the natural scenery, there’s a chance I would have missed this cast-off stove beside the railroad tracks.
near Moab, Utah
photographed 9.7.2020
Tip from a local resident
Here’s a tip, in case you find yourself in Colfax, Washington, at lunch: go to the Top Notch Cafe, whose sign says they have the best burgers in the United States. The sign is not wrong.
And the proprietor of the place, after determining that I was in fact a photographer, said, “So, you DO know about the covered bridge, don’t you?” I did not know about it, and he kindly provided directions to it, which is the only reason that this photograph came to be.
And, also the only reason that I found my favorite memento of the trip. On the edge of the dirt road leading to the bridge, I spotted a little pile of animal bones. Naturally, I saved one, a flat one that’s about two inches long and a half-inch wide. I gave it a name, too, and it rode along with us and now resides on the shelf-o-randomness in my office, where it keeps company with a toy soldier (painted gold) that I found on a sidewalk in Portland, Oregon, a glow-in-the-dark archangel Michael, etc. Anyway, the bone’s name is Leon Roadbone, of course after this guy.)
EDIT – SAD UPDATE
Ryan McGinty, an excellent Palouse photographer, posted on my Instagram account that this bridge burned down in a wildfire on September 7. “You have one of the last photos of this bridge,” he said. You can read about the bridge here.
near Colfax, Washington
photographed 9.1.2020
One Day | One Image 