I tried shots of the Chavez poster from several angles, deciding finally on this image reflected in the windows of the Cultural Center. The day's speeches were interspersed with dancers and singers.
No event in Old Town or Barelas is complete without this fellow officiating en dos idiomas.
Of course, at least one mariachi group is also mandatory.
The star performer was this little girl who danced for her mother and Cesar Chavez.
Our new mayor, Tim Keller, made a brief appearance at the beginning of the celebration, but the ladies owned the stage. Michelle Lujan Grisham, the newly elected Governor of New Mexico, is always the shortest person in any assembly of politicians, but she has a personality at least seven feet tall. The woman under the fedora to the right is Dolores Huerta, native New Mexican, co-founder of the United Farm Workers and keynote speaker for the Cesar Chavez Day celebration.
Next to the Governor in this shot is Deb Haaland, one of two Native American women who made it into the U.S. House of Representatives this year.
Quite a day for New Mexico.
I shot two rolls of Tri-X at the celebration, but brought home fewer pictures than I had hoped for due to some apparent malfunction of the Minolta X-700. Most of the photos were under-exposed and some in full sun were grossly so. Not sure if the problem is electrical, mechanical or the the result of creeping senility -- possibly a combination of all three. The manual says that in aperture-priority mode the camera should work properly with about any Minolta lens, but I'm wondering if using the old MC 135 lens may be a source of problems. I'll work with the issues as I really like the camera and the set of lenses I have for it.
My plan was to develop one roll in the usual HC110b and the other using semi-stand development. When I saw the results of the first roll, however, I decided to forego the stand dev as the complications left no room for meaningful comparison. I still feel I'm making some progress at sorting out variables in the results of my photo efforts, but it is slow going.
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Update:
I shot a test roll with the camera to systematically compare results from the three lenses I have for the Minolta X-700. The camera works fine in all three shooting modes with the normal and wide-angle lenses. The shots from the 135mm lens degraded in quality as I moved through the roll. On closer examination I see that the aperture stop-down mechanism is sluggish, probably due to dirt on the aperture blades and other moving parts. I'm not sure I have the energy available to tackle the dismantling of the lens a second time. I have gotten some satisfaction from figuring out the problem and verifying that the camera and two of the lenses are working properly.
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