Fine Art Images from the American Southwest

Catholic church at Llano de San Juan, New Mexico

Catholic church at Llano de San Juan, on the “High Road to Taos”, New Mexico. Sometimes there’s a payoff shooting images in the high afternoon sun. The shadows and texture are defined in the angled lighting and the scorching white earth around us, in this instance, fills in the shadows in the belfry of this quiet little place in Llano de San Juan. There’s never a bad time to hit the road in search of imagery in New Mexico.  Thanks for looking. G

Catholic church at Llano de San Juan, New Mexico

Fire In The Sky San Cristobal, NM

Fire in the sky over the San Cristobal Valley, NM. Below is a piece by Willa Sibert Cather, from “Death Comes for the Archbishop”, shared by a friend on my Facebook page who was inspired by this photograph. Thanks for looking. G

Fire In The Sky San Cristobal

“The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still, — and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more than anywhere else in the world. The plain was there, under one’s feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud. Even the mountains were mere ant-hills under it. Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!”

—Willa Sibert Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

Magpie Moon, San Cristobal, NM

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Magpie moon, in the cottonwood tree San Cristobal, NM. The moon rose crystal clear over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico as our resident Magpie mimicked my calls seemingly oblivious of the splendor around us. Further south, the moon rose shrouded in clouds of fire smoke. It set this morning, around 4:30am resembling a blood orange through the thick smoke that settled across the valley. As always thanks for looking. G

Magpie Moon, San Cristobal, NM

Red-Tailed Hawk, Arroyo Hondo

Red-Tailed Hawk, Arroyo Hondo, NM. Every now and then I like to revisit Poet Laureate Ted Hughes Poem, “Hawk Roosting” You can read it below. Thanks for looking. G

Red-Tailed Hawk, Arroyo Hondo

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!
The air’s buoyancy and the sun’s ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth’s face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly –
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads –

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.

 — Ted Hughes

Four Crosses And A Reflection, Abiquiu, NM

Four crosses and a reflection in Abiquiu, NM. As I lined up the lens on these iconic crosses at the Penitente Morada in Abiquiu, it must have drifted in front of the wing mirror and caught the reflection of the tree in the mirror. I’ve used this technique before intentionally, but this was a surprise. Sometimes accidents happen. Thanks for looking. G

Four crosses Abiquiu, NM

Valley Of The Gods, Utah

Valley Of The Gods, in the Bears Ears National Monument, Utah. Go there if you get a chance. This image is from a few years ago. It still moves me to the point of distraction, and I madly want to be there. Thanks for looking. G

Valley Of The Gods, Utah
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