Closing an eventful day

 

Late in the afternoon on October 18th we stopped at Camel Rock on US 84 north of Santa Fe. While no colorful sunset came to meet us there the way it had in 2017, for a brief time the sun did pierce the western clouds to spotlight parts of the badlands prominent on the eastern side of the highway. That dedicated light advantaged me, as did focal lengths at the long end of my 100–400mm lens, when I hurried to portray the illumined badlands formations before the clouds settled back in.

 

    

In the top picture, the snow-covered Sangre de Cristo Mountains provided the background. That’s where this one remarkable photographic day began. It included yellow aspens and cottonwoods and willows, forests, badlands, hoodoos, and of course snow-covered mountains. It has provided the material for 10 posts with at least two photographs apiece. I could easily have done more posts about that day but the time has come to move on, even as the next day saw us moving on.

 

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Yesterday on a local television program the announcer spoke about “a California nursing home facility.” That last word is redundant because a nursing home is a kind of facility. Nothing is lost in saying “a California nursing home.” Similarly unnecessary is the last word in often-heard phrases like “in a school setting” and “in a hospital setting.” It’s sufficient to say “in a school” or “in schools,” “in a hospital” or “in hospitals.”

  

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

Camel Rock again

 

By the time we’d visited the Santuario de Chimayó and eaten at the Rancho de Chimayó restaurant to celebrate the Lady Eve’s birthday on October 18th, it was late afternoon and therefore too late to continue on to Taos, as we’d be losing daylight by the time we got there. We turned back toward Santa Fe. On the way down US 84 I couldn’t resist stopping again at Camel Rock. On our previous visit to the area in 2017 we’d lucked out and caught a great sunset there. No such luck this time. Still, a photographer has to deal with conditions as they are, and these two pictures show the approaches I tried. In both cases I played up the clouds, and in the second image I obviously went for a silhouette.

 

   

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

From Nambé to Chimayó

   

On October 18th at Nambé Pueblo I had a great time photographing the hoodoos and other formations. Then, as we continued north-northeast on Highway 503, which forms a portion of the High Road to Taos Scenic Byway, to reach Chimayó about 10 miles away, we kept seeing more parts of the Nambé badlands that deserved to pictured.

 

 

You’re seeing two of those pictures here. And who could resist the clouds
over the snow-covered Sangre de Cristo mountains off to the east?

 

 

  

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

More from Nambé Pueblo

 

 

On October 18th at Nambé Pueblo I had a great time photographing the badlands. Today’s first two pictures provide closer looks at hoodoos on opposite sides of the panorama that set the scene two posts back. The patch of yellow at the edge of the second picture was a cottonwood tree, Populus deltoides subsp. wislizenii. 

 

 

And here’s a clear shot of the hoodoo that previously appeared behind trees:

 

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

Nambé Pueblo

 

On October 18th we happily turned in toward Nambé Pueblo and its intriguing geological formations. As much as I would have liked to get close to them, they were on fenced-off tribal land, so I got as near as I could from the closest roads and zoomed in with my 100–400mm lens.

 

 

In the top picture, two cottonwood trees, Populus deltoides subsp. wislizenii, had turned yellow. (Click to enlarge the panorama.) I eventually managed clear shots of the hoodoo in the last picture but I still like the view of it hiding behind trees.

 

  

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A November 13th commentary discussed the way people add an unnecessary qualifier to a word. Here’s another example. News is called news because it’s new. In spite of that, news announcers on television now almost always call it breaking news. News flash: if it weren’t breaking it wouldn’t be news, so drop the breaking and just call it news.

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

Hoodoos and overhangs at Sandstone Bluffs

 

At New Mexico’s Sandstone Bluffs in the El Malpais National Monument on October 14th
several hoodoos and overhangs caught my photographic attention.

 

 

For the picture below, I positioned myself so that the formation blocked the sun.

 

 

The pareidolically inclined among you may see a face looking back at you.

 

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We hear a lot of talk lately about an “existential threat” to this, that, or the other thing. Most of the claims are partisan and hyperbolic. In contrast, I take the article “An Existential Threat to Doing Good Science” seriously. Written by Luana Maroja, who came to the United States at age 23 from Brazil and is now a professor of biology at Williams University, the article bears this subtitle: “What scientists are able to teach and what research we can pursue are under attack. I know because I’m living it.” Check it out.

  

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

A hoodoo begets a head

Click for greater size.

This heady panorama is from the morning of September 3rd at Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, where strange cloud shadows in the sky had greeted us a couple of hours earlier.

If you’re interested in the craft of photography, point 6 in About My Techniques is relevant to today’s picture.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

Camel Rock

Here’s a view from June 10th showing Camel Rock, a landmark on the main highway some 11 miles north of downtown Santa Fe. When I first visited Camel Rock nearly half a century ago, anyone could walk up to it and even onto it. Now I found the structure ringed by a fence. While I appreciate the protection, the fence made it hard to take pictures because I couldn’t get close enough to stand or sit where I wanted to. Oh well, I did what I could, aided by one of those famous New Mexico sunsets.

Do you see the rocky outline of the camel, complete with a hoodoo for a head and neck? If you’d like a look back at other pareidolic images that have appeared here in 2016 and 2017, click “pareidolia” in the “Tagged with” section at the bottom of this post and scroll down through the results. (There are bound to be instances in older posts as well, but I learned the term pareidolia only last year.)

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman