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.

Moon and Jupiter...NICE...

So I was working on some other things this evening when I saw an email from a friend of mine in Albuquerque who commented on how cool the Moon and Jupiter looked rising over the Sandias (thanks Gordon for the heads-up). So I went out into my back yard and took a look at the Moon and Jupiter as it rose over the Organ Mountains (and the trees in my neighbors yard) and it was very cool. I got out the tri-pod and the camera and took some photos.

2011 World Wide Photo Walk...

Join me on Mesilla Plaza on October 1, 2011 for the 4th Annual World Wide Photo Walk. If you would like to participate you can sign up at http://www.worldwidephotowalk.com/ and join me and several others as we enjoy a couple hours of photographing in a very cool place.

Fort Davis and Valentine Texas...

Here are some photos taken with the Holga camera in Fort Davis, TX and Valentine, TX on my way home from TSP this past June. The first photo is the courthouse in Fort Davis then some of the building in downtown Fort Davis, it was a very interesting little town. Next I stopped in Valentine, TX and took photos of an old house that was in the process of collapsing at the edge of town and then the Prada Store at the other end of Valentine, this was an installation from Marfa, TX about 30 miles south of Valentine.



All of the images were taken with a Holga camera and black and white film. I will be taking a lot more photos with the Holga.

Work, Work, Work..

OK, so be jealous of what I do, I think I have the best job ever... Guess what I get to do at my job; I get to draw and color. It is like kindergarten for adults, now if only I could convince my bosses to allow for nap time it would be perfect.

For a couple months now I have been working on the design for a new band and orchestra building at one of the local middle schools here in Las Cruces (Picacho Middle School). The space they currently have is far too small for their needs, and they are missing a lot of the support spaces for these programs so our new building will provide more space and the needed support spaces. We will also be remodeling the existing space to better accommodate their choir and piano programs and we will be remodeling the existing restrooms to bring them up to current accessibility requirements.

A couple of weeks ago we presented the design to Picacho and then to the School Board for design approval, and we got it from both. This is the presentation board I created for the school, look at all the coloring I got to do, I used color pencils and markers to color the drawing for the presentation and I am very pleased with how it came out.

Well now the hard part, earlier this week I met with our structural engineer to discuss how the building is going to stand up...darn engineers and gravity now I have structure that is getting in the way of some of the really cool things I was hoping to do. I am now trying to figure out how to keep the same look to the building and accommodating the structure at the same time. Below is an image of the building before the structure was really considered (it was done in a program called Sketch Up).

Notice the horizontal windows near the top of the two larger areas, these are intended to bring natural light into the orchestra and band rooms, everyone has liked the long expanses of glazing but now we have structural columns that get in the way of the windows so I have been playing with some other ideas for the elevations to maintain the feel of these long narrow elements.

I have been using trace paper and markers to draw the facades and below are two drawings of the north and east elevations, I think I like the idea so it is one of the things we will be considering as we continue to move into the development of construction documents.

I am having so much fun with this project and I know I will be doing a few more of these drawings in the next few days as I continue to work out more of the conflicts with structure and then mechanical.

I have been lucky that my boss has allowed me to basically run with this project and do the design, he has been a great help in working out some of the issues but he is leaving the design decisions up to me. I am looking foreword to seeing this project develop from discussions with the principal and teachers to an actual building that will start construction later this year.

I will keep you informed.

2011 TSP Peoples Choice...

This is a watercolor painting I did of the summer milky way, I entered it into the Astro Art contest at the 2011 Texas Star Party and it won the Peoples Choice award. I am excited about it and was very glad to have a very good friend present me with the award and she even told everyone that this was my first TSP, Becky thank you for talking me into going and for encouraging me to enter something. Now I need to start painting for next years TSP.

Below are some of the pages from my sketch book, even though we only had a few nights of clear skies I managed to get in quite a bit of observing in that time.

And Home From TSP...

I had a great time at the Texas Star Party (TSP), this was my first time there and even though the skies did not cooperate so much I still had fun. I was able to get in some observing the first and second day there and then on the fourth day I was able to get in a few hours of observing before the clouds moved in. I will post some more of the sketches I did soon. I met a lot of people at TSP and made some new friends I am hoping to see again next year when I go again (I am planning on going again). It was amazing to see so many people who all enjoy looking at the stars, some using their eyes and some using their cameras or computers to photograph what they are wanting to see.

On the way home from TSP I stopped in Valentine, TX to take some photos of a couple of buildings I had noticed on the way to TSP. An old abandoned home and windmill...

I like the way buildings decay and change over time, especially when they are abandoned and forgotten about. this building. It seems that Valentine, TX does not have a shortage of these buildings, it is a very small place but I noticed at least a half dozen buildings have collapsed or are in some state of collapse just like this one.

But at the opposite end of town is the Prada Store, it is a "sort-of" art exhibit for Marfa, TX just down the road from Valentine. It is a lonely building in the middle of nowhere (almost) with some Prada shoes and bags on display. I do not think they are real Prada, but they where at one time, quite some time ago the store was broken into and the real stuff was stolen and replaced with replica product, at least that is what I have heard.

Here is the Prada Store in Valentine, TX; I have heard about it and have always wanted to see it imagine my surprise when on the way to TSP I drive right past it. So I made a point to stop and photograph it on my way home from TSP. It is so cool, just sitting there all by itself the Prada Store, I am looking foreword to stopping again next year and seeing how and if it has changed in any way.

Texas Star Party (TSP) 2011...my first time...

So I arrived on Sunday morning at TSP for my first time and so far it has been a very cool experience and I am looking forward to coming again next year. This is a panorama of the upper observing field; there are two other observing fields I will try and photograph them later this week. I am set up on this field at the opposite end of where I took this photo from. There are so many scopes of all shapes and sizes and some fairly large ones. I am impressed and maybe a little frightened by how much effort some observers go to create the perfect observing setup for themselves.

The first night was very clear but the seeing was not really good but I got quite a bit of observing in. Last night (Monday) we had quite a few high thin clouds and spent much of the earlier evening dodging the thin clouds but after about 1:00am things got much better and I was able to do some nice viewing.

These are two of the first sketches I did from my observing log for this trip, I did them on Sunday evening my first night observing. The first sketch is a lower power showing both M81 and M82 in the field, the M82 sketch was done with twice as much magnification and it is one of the object from one of the TSP Observing lists.

I will post more later in the week.

And now I take up Gardening...

So, I found out about 2 months ago that there is a community garden in our neighborhood and there are some plots available if I am interested. So just before Easter I pay the $15 fee for the year and get a key to the garden and go to the store to get some plants and seeds, and the fun begins.

I planted 3 tomato's, green chilies, jalapenos, radishes, carrots, cucumbers, squash, lettuce, melons, onions, garlic and basil, but it did not grow (or I can not find it in all the rest of the stuff that is growing). I am having a lot of fun and my garden is the envy of everyone, I was one of the first to plant my plants in the garden so it is the fullest bed out there. I planted the tomato's, jalapenos, green chilies and squash from growing plants and all the rest from seed.

Today I was at the garden watering and was visiting with some friends, Josh and Jess, who have a garden there now, next to mine and I got a second garden that we are sharing with just corn in it for now, we planted it last weekend from seed so we have a few more days before we see any growth. We were looking at my bed and decided that I need to thin out the carrots so I am going to have to transplant some of them to the other bed. I decided to check the radishes to see if they need to be thinned out and I find some radishes ready to pick...

We took out 6 of them and washed three of them and tried them out, I brought the others home and used them in the salad I made for lunch tomorrow, and guess what the lettuce is from my garden also, I have been picking it and using it for about a week now it is pretty good...

I am excited for the rest of the garden to ripen and be harvested, I am going to have so many tomatoes and lots of squash and if the melons keep doing as well as they are I will have lots of melons also. I will keep you all posted as I get more food from the garden.

2011 Super Moon Rising...

On Saturday March 19th, there was a pretty special Full Moon, it was a "Supper Moon" this happens when we have a Full Moon at the same time the Moon is at its closest approach to the Earth in its orbit around us. This only happens every 20 years or so, so it made this evening a good night for moon watchers and photographers alike. I had made a decision earlier that week I was going to take the evening and go out and photograph the Moon rising over the mountains here in Las Cruces.

I was talking to my landlord earlier that day and we decided to make a day of it and go out together to photograph the Moon rising and then go have dinner someplace afterwards. We went out and found a good spot and set up our cameras and waited for the moon to rise. Here is one photo of the moon coming up over the peaks of the mountains and then a second image that I created in photoshop, it is more what I was hoping to see when the moon came up but did not so I made it happen.

Bosque Del Apache Sidetracked...

So Max and I where in Albuquerque this past weekend and on the way home Max convinced me to take the more scenic route and drive by the Bosque Del Apache (I guess because he is a BIRD dog). It was a little windy but all and all it was a pretty nice day and this is one of the photos I took along the road.

Future Fruit...

So I was in the back yard a few weeks ago and noticed that there is a pomegranate tree in the neighbors back yard but a bunch of the branches hang over our fence so next year when the fruit is ready I will be picking and eating some yummy pomegranate (is it stealing if it is hanging on my side of the fence?). There are several pomegranates still hanging on the bare tree, all of them are broken like this one and it looks like maybe some birds have been taking some of the seeds from inside some of them.

February 5th Visit to the VLA...

I went up to Socorro this past weekend to visit with my friend Judy and to go out to the VLA to look at the site for a sundial exhibit they are working on. I am going to do some concept sketches for them and I wanted to take some photos of the site to work with. I took lots of photos and also took some panoramas and have put a couple of them together.

I am never disappointed with the vistas in New Mexico, this is such a beautiful state and how amazing to see so much technology (VLA) out in the middle of nothing almost, it is so amazing to see all these radio antennas stretched out along the plains of New Mexico. This truly is a "Land of Enchantment" and I am very glad to live and work in such an amazing place.

If you look closely you will notice quite a few extra antennas in this panorama; I really like the program I am using for these (it came with my camera) but if you are not careful when you select the images to stitch together it will find matches and almost seamlessly add them to the rest of the panorama. It looks like it was able to match up the mountain ranges in the distance. It still came out pretty cool, even if it is not correct.