Saturday Morning

I took a walk this morning through the Botanical Garden where everything is in bloom. My first stop is always the lily pond.

Back from my walk, I found the little one asleep in the scale we have been using to weigh the kittens. She is up to a whopping pound-and-a-half now.

First Light

These images are from the first roll of film through my recently acquired Minolta Autowide, a camera from Japan, introduced in 1958. It is a wonderfully crafted instrument, and one of the most interesting in my collection of classics. I'll try to add a page on this camera to the vintage cameras section of my site in the near future.

This is a tribute to one of my beautiful daughters. No, she doesn't look like a dinosaur, but she is the Chief of Education at this museum. She's been very gracious about our arrival in Albuquerque, and we're grateful.

The red Hummer doesn't know it is scheduled for extinction. It is powerful, and beautiful, and as clueless as its earlier cousins.

The Old Town gates were intercepted on a morning walk.

I was testing a newly-acquired FED 3 and its companion Jupiter 12 lens. The Fed is one of a long line of Leica clones produced in the millions in the former Soviet Union. The lens is a copy of the Zeiss Ikon Biogon. The camera and the lens are both a bit rough around the edges, but capable shooters none the less.

Morning in the Sandias

There was still a little nighttime coolness left when I walked up a tree-lined arroyo in the Sandia Mountains at the east edge of Albuquerque. All along the way there was a lush display of Apache Plume and quite a few cactus flowers responding to the touch of the sun. The thing that caught my attention, though, was ground litter from last year and before. Much of it was made up of tiny brown Live Oak leaves. They surrounded fallen pine cones and dry cholla branches which were merging into the forest floor. In the background were rounded granite boulders with an upholstery of lichens which seemed timeless.

Some animals seem very unhappy in zoos; the giraffes do not. They seem at ease in their enclosure at the Albuquerque Zoo. Perhaps it is only an illusion created by their almost supernatural grace.

Pentax Spotmatic, 135 Mamiya/Sekor, 2x telextender