My Version of Ansel's

The New Church at Taos Pueblo

One of the things I like doing when we go to places in the West is to visit the same places that Ansel Adams did many years ago.

There might be changes to the locations, like a parking lot added or a couple of extra crosses on top of a church, but essentially you can still find many of the same iconic places that Ansel found first.

I purposefully don't study his images so I won't copy them, but then after I make my pictures it's always exciting to look at the way he saw things and compare them to the way I saw that same place. Not that I'm even thinking of comparing my skills to his, but just to know that he thought this place special enough to set up his camera makes it special for me.

(By-the-way...mine's on the bottom and his is on the top, but if you didn't know that then maybe I'm getting better at this.)

Just one I like

No reason for this one. It's just one I like from our last trip. Sometimes an image doesn't have to mean anything, or show anything special, or follow any rules.

Sometimes you just have to like it as it is.

Corner of St. Francis Church
Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico

San Geronimo Cemetery

One of the first things we did in Sante Fe, and I think the best, was to drive to Taos and visit the Taos Pueblo.

The Pueblo is considered to be the oldest continuously inhabited community in the country, with the two main structures dating back well over 1,000 years.

This image is taken in the cemetery of the Pueblo, near the OLD church of San Geronimo. The church was built around 1619 and had an interesting end.

In 1847 the people of the Pueblo tried to overthrow the U.S. government and killed the governor of New Mexico who lived at that time in Taos. In retaliation the U.S. Army took the responsible parties to the plaza at the Church; hung them; and destroyed the San Geronimo Church. The plaza was turned into a cemetery and is still used today. The church was rebuilt nearby in 1850 and is considered the NEW church.

The thoughts of 1,000 years ago; built in 1619; new in 1847 make our short history around here seem trivial. The first house in Benton Harbor was built two years after the new church was built at the Pueblo and it's now a museum and we talk about it as "history".

The people of the Taos Pueblo are still living in and worshipping in those same buildings. They live with the real history every day.

A Sante Fe evening

Denise, Sloan and I were in Sante Fe a couple of weeks ago and one evening the skys came together for a magical moment.

As we were riding down the Turquoise Trail just before sunset the clouds over the high desert started to show signs that something special was going to happen. Within just a brief time span of only about five minutes, the white fluffy clouds started to change color and continued to change from pink to orange to purple and everything in between.

Sloan and I grabbed our cameras and ran around outside the car trying to keep up with the colors as Denise did her best to keep up with her thoughts on paper (I'm sure you'll see something from her on this before long).

The colors didn't last long but I'll always remember that evening. Not just for what I was seeing, but for who I was with and how they were there to share it with me.