Canonical New York

In 2005 I traveled to New York and spent several hours at the top of the Empire State Building photographing the unparalleled New York City skyline. It was an overcast day, so I decided to wait until sunset and hoped that the sun would shine through in the break between the clouds and the horizon that I had noticed. The wait really paid off with fantastic warm light bouncing off the clouds and the buildings.

I have also included some street level shots primarily from Broadway at the Theater District.

Enjoy!
Radzfoto

Sunset on Mesa south of Chaco Canyon New Mexico

2007-12-30 Chaco Canyon New Mexico 7255 light, originally uploaded by rauldiaz.

Everyone has a favorite set of photographs that captured a scene especially well. For me, this is one of those photographs. My brother and I had just spent a long day exploring and photographing the amazing Chaco Culture National Historical Park (I will post some photos of the Chaco Canyon and its beautiful ruins in another post).

We left the park in the late afternoon on a cold, crisp winter day to head back to Albuquerque. As we drove out of the park via its seldom used southern entrance (it's not used as much because it's a dirt road and you normally need a 4-wheel drive to navigate it, but the cold, dry weather made the road fairly easy to manage), we took a county road towards Interstate 40.

We were truly in the middle of nowhere. As we took one of the few curves of this county road, I looked to my left and noticed the mesa lit by winter sunset. I pulled over although there were no other cars on the road and we proceeded to photograph the glorious light reflected off the snowy mesa.

On the upper right in the far background, you can just make out Mt. Taylor in central New Mexico. This tall but lonely peak is revered as a holy place by the Indians of the many pueblos descended from the Anasazi who inhabited the enormous buildings and villages in the Chaco Canyon around 1,000AD.

This place should have a name. Using Google Earth, I located the exact place where I took this photograph. Although there is more than a good chance that I made a mistake, I think that this mesa is called "La Mesa de las Vacas" (the mesa of the cows), or, at least, that what the map says.

It's not a romantic name for such a special place.

Enjoy!
Radzfoto

Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument

Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, New Mexico

The photographs in this slideshow were taken over a two-year time period as we visited the park which is quite near our house in Albuquerque. Since the park presents short, moderate hikes, the entire family can enjoy a wonderful morning or afternoon (just don't hike there in the summer in the afternoon. It gets hot!). The white weathered rock formations create surrealistic sculptures against those huge New Mexico bright-blue skies. Once you climb up to the top of the ridge, you can see the broad central Rio Grande valley which runs straight down the middle of New Mexico on its way to Texas and Mexico.

The national monument is nearby the Cochiti Pueblo, one of the many Indian tribes in New Mexico. You are also 30 minutes from the capital, Santa Fe, with its exquisite adobe architecture, its history and numberless art galleries.

Enjoy!
Radzfoto

Albuquerque, not really such an ugly duckling

Albuquerque, not really such an ugly duckling

Many, if not most, New Mexicans consider Albuquerque a boring, if not outright ugly, city. But the New Mexicans that makes these claims suffer from a lack of perspective because of the gift of riches they enjoy that few other states can claim: almost limitless space, a proud and rich history, and a collection of national parks and monuments that requires a lifetime to visit and appreciate. I will show photographs and discuss some of these parks in other blogs, but, today, we want to give Albuquerque a chance to defend itself.

Albuquerque is the largest city in New Mexico. Of the 2 million inhabitants of New Mexico nearly half live in or around Albuquerque. With the capital, Santa Fe, only an hour away by car, comparisons begin immediately with Santa Fe's wonderful adobe architecture that pervades the city and it's amazing collection of art galleries rivaled only by New York. But fewer than 75,000 people live in or near Santa Fe. Albuquerque, on the other hand, is a working man's town, a business traveler's destination. The city proper has a population of about 525,000 with the surrounding towns of Corrales, Rio Rancho, Bernalillo, Placitas and Los Lunas bringing it up to 840,000 or so.

If you think about the area of New Mexico, which makes it the fifth largest state in the United States, you can imagine the vast tracks of empty land between the cities and towns of New Mexico. I have photographed many places in New Mexico in which the word “awesome” does not suffer from exaggeration, but Albuquerque always gets short shrift. Albuquerque is somehow the L.A. to Santa Fe's San Francisco. Santa Fe is considered beautiful, wealthy, artistic. Albuquerque is the place New Mexicans love to put down.

The photo slideshow at the top of this blog presents different aspects of Albuquerque from its architecture, to its impressive hot-air balloon culture, to its more quaint and, perhaps, sad, side. Albuquerque certainly has its seamy side with dirty, run-down and dilapidated, even crime-infested, neighborhoods. But it also has wonderful areas with stunning skies, mountains, art and architecture which is what I have chosen to show you.

Radzfoto

Adobe walls with snow

Adobe Walls with Snow, June 13, 2008

I took these photographs at my house in Albuquerque, New Mexico on December 31, 2006 after an unusually powerful snowstorm that left a large part of the state paralyzed for three or four days. In Winter, Albuquerque normally gets a dusting of snow that lasts a few hours and is gone by lunch time. This storm dropped between 18 to 24 inches of snow in the city and much, much more at the higher elevations. For those of us in the city, it was an opportunity for snow play and fun, especially as it occurred just at New Year's Eve. For travelers, those using air or car, it was a nightmare waiting until the airport and the freeways were reopened.

For a photographer, it was a chance to take beautiful pictures around the city. I particularly like the look of adobe walls with the bright New Mexico sun glinting of the snow.

Enjoy!
Radzfoto