Holga, Holga, Holga...

Here are some more photos taken with my Holga and Holga Pinhole Cameras.

This is a photo taken at the VLA this past summer.

This was an accident, I forgot to advance the film but I kind of like the way it came out. It is a double exposure, but I seem to have changed the orientation of the camera. This is taken with the Fish Eye lense attachment to my Holga.

 This is the alter at San Xavier outside of Tucson, AZ. This is also taken with the Fish Eye attachment on my Holga but I have cropped out some of the black around the outside.

 This is the side chapel at San Xavier with its cactus garden, a very cool place. This is taken with my Pinhole Holga camera.

And another Pinhole photo of the courtyard adjacent to San Xavier, the curch itself is on the left side.

Back Yard Memories...

When I moved into my apartment at 308 N. Mesquite there was this very nice Mexican Elder tree in the back yard, just outside my kitchen window. The year before last when we had the really hard freeze down here most of the tree died (all the top branches), it is growing from all the lower branches now.

The tree has been one of my favorite things here, even the dead parts of it are interesting and I have enjoyed photographing it. About a week ago, the top branches were cut down due to concerns of them breaking and falling down in strong winds (they have been slowly falling off for some time). But, I miss the top of the tree, I guess I will have to wait for it to grow back now.

Both of these images were taken on Black and White 120 Film with a Holga plastic camera, one of my favorite cameras that I do not use enough, but I am starting to use some more.

Tucson, AZ - WMR Conference

I was in Tucson, AZ late last week for the Western Mountain Region (WMR) Conference for the AIA. Late in 2011 I was awarded the AIA WMR Jason Pettigrew Scholarship which paid for my trip to Grassroots in Washington, DC this past March and then for my trip to the WMR this year in Tucson.

I decided to drive out and left very early on Wednesday morning so that I could arrive in time for a business meeting at the conference that started at 9:00am. I then did a half day drawing class on Wednesday before two full days of conference seminars and meetings. I had a really great time and got to visit with a lot of great people and even see some friends I have not seen in some time.

The conference ended on Friday, but I had the room for another evening so I went out to dinner with some architects from Las Cruces on Friday evening then had a drink with them back at the hotel before turning in for the evening. Since I had been getting up pretty early all week I decided to relax a little and sleep in on Saturday then headed out to explore a little of Tucson before heading home.

I decided to go and visit the Mission Church called San Xavier that is just south of Tucson and I am very glad I did. This is now one of my favorite places, it is a beautiful church and the paintings and carvings on the interior are amazing. Here are a couple photos that I took, I will be posting more in the future and I will be visiting this place again next time I am in Tucson.

The exterior of San Xavier del Bac also called the "White Dove of the Desert" construction began in 1783 and was completed in 1797, Franciscan missionary Fr. Juan Bautista Velerrain hired architect  Ignacio Goana to design and build the church.

The alter and just a small amount of the painting and sculpture that are inside the church. Little is know about the artists but some of the original sculptures still exist int he church. The dome is a masonry dome, and it is amazing.

Picacho Opens Soon

I posted some of these late last year, and now the students will be moving in on Monday. This was the second project I worked on when I moved to Las Cruces and it is the 1st project I did from beginning to end, it is my 1st building.

We met with the staff at Picacho early in 2011 to find out exactly what they needed. When we got back to the office my boss, Gary, asked me to come up with some initial ideas and options for the new building. I sat down with some trace and over the next few days sketched out 5 or six ideas. We sat down and looked at what worked and did not work and I then narrowed it down to 3 options and after a little more discussion and presentation to the school we settled on an initial design. We are designing a new music building and then remodeling the existing spaces.

At that point I had to sit down and work out the sizes and locations for each of the needed spaces. After a couple of weeks and a few more meetings we had a fairly good floor plan to begin some actual drawings. I then began to learn Revit because I decided to use this project as a learning tool for the program (I am not yet a Revit fan). After working out some issues we were on are way to working drawings, I had a couple people in the office to help me out and we were off.

This was the 1st building that I was the primary designer and project manager for. I took this building from conception through construction documents and now through construction administration. This building is only a part of the entire project, but it is the largest part and it is a stand alone building. We also remodeled all the restrooms throuhout the school to make them ADA accessible (completed this summer) and once the student move into this building we will begin a remodel of the existing music rooms (to be completed in about 2 1/2 months).

An initial elevation.

An initial Sketch Up model.

The completed building.

The building lobby.

 

The Orchestra Room.

White Sands Panoramas

Here are a couple of panoramas I created from multiple photos taken at White Sands last night (08.31.2012), they were taken about 1 1/2 hours apart.

 

 

The photo above was taken just after sunset about 8:00pm.

 

The photo above was taken at 9:40pm and is entirely lit by Moon light.

Blue Moon at White Sands

I went out last night (08.31.2012) to White Sands to photograph the Full Moon (Blue Moon) with some friends from the Doña Ana Camera Club. We had a great time and I took a lot of photos. This is actually two photos combined to create the image I was looking for. The first image was taken exposing for the yucca stem and the second image I exposed for the moon then combined them in Photoshop for the final image seen here.

Nikon D5100 - ISO 800
Yucca - 100mm - 1/8s - F6.7
Moon - 82mm - 1/90s - F9.5

More photos to come...

Perseid Meteor Shower - Aug. 12th

Early Sunday morning I took my camera and headed north of Las Cruces looking for someplace to watch and photograph the Perseid Meteor Shower. I wound up setting up along the side of the road at a Pecan Orchard halfway between Las Cruces and Hatch. I arrived and began photographing at about 1:45am and finished up about 4:45am before heading home.

I took almost 300 photos and was able to photograph about four (4) meteors. I probably observed maybe a dozen meteors an hour so overall I saw around 30 of them total and of the 30 about 5 were bright and left trails. I also got some nice photos of the cresent Moon rising with Jupiter and a little later I got some nice photos of the Moon, Jupiter and Venus.

 1st three photos: Nikon D5100, 18mm, ISO 800, F5.6, 15 sec.

Last photo: Nikon D5100, 18mm, ISO 800, F3.5 8 sec.