La Quinta

 Thanks to my friend, Bob Eggers, I recently enjoyed a bike tour of the Los Poblanos ranch.  I had visited the restaurant at Los Poblanos several times before, but was unaware of the extent of the property and its interesting history and architecture.  La Quinta is the name given to this building adjacent to the main ranch house which was designed expressly for large meetings and cultural events.  The architect was John Gaw Meem, famous for his Pueblo Revival and Territorial Revival designs.  

These pictures were shot on expired Kodak Gold 200 in my little point-and-shoot Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim (vuws).  Perhaps not the camera one first considers when talking about architectural photography, but  the two-element 22mm lens is surprisingly sharp and produces wide views with little apparent distortion.

I had some previous familiarity with Meems' work as a result of many hours of walking around the UNM campus where there are twenty-five buildings designed by him, most in the Pueblo Revival style. He regarded the Zimmerman Library as his crowning achievement.  The Library has been the subject for many of my old cameras including the Ansco Folding Buster Brown and the KW Patent Etui.

Update

We enjoyed our 7/7/20 breakfast at Los Poblanos.

The outdoor seating looks out over fields of lavender toward the Sandia Mountains.

This was just the second time we have been to Los Poblanos.  The first was just a few months ago when we took out-of-town friends there for breakfast.  On that occasion we got to visit the huge kitchen and we could have sat at a table there and watched the meals being prepared.  We decided to put that off to the next visit, so that could be some time in the distant future now.

Early Morning Walk

We went to the Los Poblanos Open Space this morning to see the Sandhill Cranes.

There is a cold front moving into New Mexico this weekend, so I expect it will bring along more birds.  I may try a 2x and 3x telextender with the Zoom to see if I can pick up a bit more detail that way.  Focusing is a challenge, though, as the Pentax has a rather dull screen and the depth of field is very narrow.

Cranes

I went out for a late-morning ride and found hundreds of cranes and Canada geese in the fields of the Los Poblanos Open Space. I went home for the Pentax and a telephoto, but by the time I returned most of the birds were gone, likely toward a next stop at the Bosque del Apache refuge 90 miles to the south. I'm hoping to get back to Los Poblanos again, and will try some different film and lens combinations.