Baila Baila

 The folk dance group, Baila Baila, puts on an elaborate show each year in Old Town during the Balloon Fiesta with children in traditional Mexican costumes and a lot of makeup.  The large number of participants offers many opportunities for photographers.

I am still not getting the tonal qualities I would like from the expired Acros 400.  The balance of shadows and highlights presents a difficult challenge for scanning and only approach acceptability with considerable photoshopping.  I tried semi-stand development in hc110 with this roll, so will probably go to dilution B or E for the next.

Spanish Broom 2

As I have said many times before, what I enjoy the most about Albuquerque's annual Balloon Fiesta is the afternoon musical performances which take place in Old Town.  On Saturday we had the opportunity to enjoy a second encounter with the Spanish Broom Flamenco group. 

 

What this experience revealed to me was the importance of the performance venue to  Flamenco style.  We watched, along with a large audience, the group this time dancing on the stage of the gazebo in the Plaza Vieja.  The strong voice of the cantaora along with the guitar, the cajón and dancers' footwork produced the expected irresistible rhythm.

The Spanish Broom group delivered a very polished performance as was true of the first time we saw them.  However, the effect was much less impactful on the stage than it had been in the small plaza where we had first encountered the group.  Flamenco is a musical style that is really best suited to intimate settings.  On a stage surrounded by a large audience the nuances of tapping feet, cajón and hand clapping become hard to perceive.

  In the intimate setting of a small cafe or a little plaza the performers can better show off their individual styles and techniques, and the audience can fully appreciate the gestures and expressions which are an essential part of the performance.

In the Neighborhood

 Unsettled Fall weather has often been a problem for Albuquerque's annual Balloon Fiesta.  This year, though, it looks like good flying weather for all nine days of the event.

 I thought I might not see any balloons up close this year, but on Monday morning a gentle wind from the north brought quite  few over our neighborhood.  Close to the ground there was just a very slight current of air which allowed several balloons to easily land on nearby streets.

I followed the descending craft as best I could on foot, but was not quick enough to catch any actually touching down.

 The balloons got me out on the streets of the neighborhood early in the day while the sun was low in the sky and the coolness of the night still lingered in the shadows

Spanish Broom

 We enjoyed a flamenco performance in Old Town's Plaza Don Luis by the Spanish Broom group on Saturday.  The dancers, singers and guitarists all performed at a high level of skill.  They will do another performance at the Casa Rondeña Winery on October 6th and will be  back in Plaza Don Luis on the 10th.  The informal setting of the little plaza combined with the excellent skills on display lent a note of authenticity to the event.

 

Photographing the action was quite a challenge due to the group's highly kinetic style; they are seldom still for even a moment.

I shot the pictures with both the normal and telephoto lenses for my Olympus Pen FT half-frame camera.  The film was some slightly outdated Acros 400 shared with me by fellow film enthusiast, Jim Grey.  His work with the film looked quite a bit better than mine, possibly because of the choice of developers.  I used the same PMK Pyro I normally use with Kentmere, and at the same time and temperature.  I think I'll try some HC110 for the next roll.

Update:

Margaret recorded a short video of the Old Town performance of Spanish Broom.

My Story

 Film photographer, Chip Greenberg, has done a marvelous job of hosting monthly Zoom meetings of our New Mexico Film Photographers group. For our September meeting he asked me to do a presentation about my history in photography. 

My Story

 (A recording of the first 30 minutes of the September meeting of the New Mexico Film Photographers.)

Photography at Museums

 I have made a lot of photographs in and around museums. That was brought home to me not long ago when I started following and contributing to the Analog Museums group on Flickr. To start that I did a search on the term "museum" in Flickr and was surprised to find I was approaching a hundred images on the subject at that photo sharing site. I made a selection of what I considered the best of those and put them in an album on the Flickr site.

Albuquerque Art Museum

My interest in museums developed early; the first book I can remember reading was one by Roy Chapman Andrews about his explorations in Mongolia and his work as a exhibit designer, curator, and ultimately the director of the Museum of Natural History in New York. My own practical awareness of museums became a reality when I lived for a time in New York.  I had an apartment just across the street from the Brooklyn Museum and visited it often.  Photographing the children of some friends earned me a membership with the Museum of Modern Art and I thereafter visited the MOMA almost weekly.

Albuquerque Art Museum

Albuquerque, where we now live, has a good number of well designed and well run museums for a city of its small size and economic resources. There are three museums within walking distance of our home.  Of those, I visit the Albuquerque Art Museum nearly every Sunday.  The Art Museum and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History offer free entry several times monthly and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at UNM is always free to visitors. UNM has had an impressive place in the history of photography in America and it has an extensive archive of photographic works.  In recent years however the UNM Art Museum has done very little of note with the available resources.

New Mexico Hispanic Cultural Center

Restrictions on photography in museums was common in the past, but most now permit visitors to make photos with the only prohibitions being on the use of flash and tripods. In my own museum photo efforts I tend to focus mostly on making pictures which incorporate a portrayal of the museum experience by visitors.

New Mexico Museum of Natural History

 In regard to photographic techniques I have found that a wide-angle lens is often very useful when exhibits are confined to tight spaces, as well as in capturing the subjects in their over-all context.  Museum lighting is often kept at a low level in an effort to minimize light damage to objects on display, so fast films and wide apertures are helpful.

Albuquerque Art Museum

Photography as a subject of museum displays has become of increased importance in most museums over the years.  I always hope for a bit more, but our local museums have actually brought some impressive shows to town.  One of the best in recent memory was the big retrospective of Danny Lyon's work at the Art Museum which provided an opportunity to appreciate the uniquely immersive style of this long-time New Mexico resident.

PIMA Air and Space Museum, Tucson

 All of the museums in town include photo exhibits among their  offerings, and both the Natural History Museum and the Nuclear Museum  conduct yearly contests open to the participation of  local photographers.

One of my pinhole images on display at the Nuclear Museum

Broken Boxes

 The large fabric and metal sculpture near the entrance to the current exhibition at the Albuquerque Museum drew a lot of favorable attention from visitors.  All of the pieces exhibited were expertly crafted, though their meaning  and relatability  often seemed obscure to me.

 I first photographed the mother wolf figure with the Elmar 3.5/50 lens on my Leica IIIa.  I thought the resultant image on Kentmere 400 was quite good.  However, I wanted to better show the large scale of the piece, so I went back on another day with the Jupiter 12 2.8/35mm.  That did give me some images that better illustrated the liveliness and the context and proportionality compared to human dimensions.  The very low light level made it a challenging undertaking.

 The "Broken Boxes" title of the exhibit came from a podcast consisting of ten years of interviews with artists, including those in the current exhibition.  Even after reading some of the explanations on site, the show title still required some clarification for me.  A friend who is a docent at the museum suggested that the title terms could be similar to the concept of "out of the box" as the artists were all indigenous and were challenging prevalent ideas about their cultures.

The artists that created the wolf sculpture are Cannupa Hanska Luger and Marie Watt.