2018
For the fifteen years I’ve lived in Santa Fe, every time I pass this particularly magnificent old Cottonwood standing along the west side of Canyon Road, I’ve known I must photograph it.
Situated In the front yard of an art gallery, one property north of Delgado Street, stands this enormous, incredibly majestic Cottonwood with its high, and wide, canopy spreading gloriously, with exquisite symmetry. It is most spectacular in late October as its leaves turn their golden yellow.
This year, after spending much of September and October high up on Santa Fe Mountain amongst its extensive Aspen stands capturing various stages of this fall’s color turn, one morning in late October my favorite Cottonwood at last insisted on my attention.
What’s always especially captivated my attention has been the lovely radial symmetry of its incredible canopy. This late morning its leaves were at peak color against a wonderful blue sky.
Now, you too can see what’s always always captivated my fascination about this more than 100 year old natural treasure…
2015
Another series of captures from “my” 8,500′ ridge vantage point, 20 miles north of Santa Fe, offers dramatic “takes” of the Sangre’s west face — including its foothills — leading up to its 12,000′ peaks perched under a late afternoon sky.
As direct sunlight still bathes the nearby foothills, the receding Sangre peaks read as a distant blue line of demarcation that separate the Blood of Christ ridge from the Western cloud-laden sky. These three receding horizontal elements of color and texture afford an array of blending possibilities…
2013
The fourth of ten successive explorations of the Santa Fe Baldy portion of the Sangre de Cristo range, just north of Santa Fe.
2011
The Truchas Peaks are 25 miles northeast of Santa Fe in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Spanish for “trout”, it is north-south trending with four identifiable summits including South Truchas Peak, 13,102’, the second highest independent peak in New Mexico and North Truchas Peak, 13,024’.
The birth of the Sangre de Cristos Mountains, the southernmost subrange of the Rockies, began 80 million years ago when the Farallon Plate slid under the North American Plate at such a shallow subduction, it created a broad belt of mountains running down North America. The low angle moved the focus of crustal melting and mountain building much farther inland than the normal 2-300 miles. Over the past 60 million years, erosion stripped away the high rocks, revealing the ancestral rocks beneath, which have since been eroded by water and glaciers to sculpt the Rockies into dramatic peaks and valleys.
I was fortunate to capture Truchas Peaks in late light, immediately following the first snow.
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2011
Concentrating once again on the Galisteo Basin, situated between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, I captured the mountain ranges in its south and west quadrants, plus to the north the very southern end of the last of the Sangre de Cristo foothills – such beautiful high desert light emphasizing their relative elevations.
To view more images of Galisteo Basin, see Galisteo Basin I and Galisteo Basin II
2011
So taken by this basin’s spectacular views at Santa Fe’s southern doorstep, I find myself returning again and again.
An upwelling of the Earth’s mantle thirty million years ago caused a pair of parallel fault zones, 40 miles apart, to cut north-south through New Mexico from the San Juan Mountains in south central Colorado to the southwestern tip of Texas; 8-10 million years later, this slice of the Earth’s crust sank as much as 5 miles, creating the Rio Grande Rift, which in turn extended a network of fault patterns that pulled apart the Earth’s crust to the breaking point. From the Rio Grande Rift west to the Sierras, these faults were the genesis of the southwest’s predominate Basin & Range topography: fallen crustal blocks created basins; uplifted blocks became mountain ranges.
Low-angled high-desert light with some cloud cover makes it possible to emphasize the differing characters of these surrounding mountains
To view more images of Galisteo Basin, see Galisteo Basin I and Galisteo Basin III
2006
In the Woods
Fifteen years after Trees I, I returned to my earliest motif. Trees were no longer a subject to be mastered, I saw their nuances and spirit in a way I had not earlier in my career. In deconstructing these images, I walked a fine line between representation and abstraction, yet when I released control and allowed the trees to speak, their story informed my lens.
