Welcome to APG's October 2018 Newsletter

Albuquerque: Nothing to Do?

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Gallery Views and News

October 2018

Albuquerque: Nothing to Do?

Albuquerque: Nothing to Do???

   Last year local television anchor, FOG* David Romero, asked a young woman at the Balloon fiesta what she thought of Albuquerque. Her chilling response was that besides the balloon park and the “old city”[sic] there was nothing to do.

   Baloney.

This month we'll explore just a few of the other things you, your family, and your guests can do after the mass ascensions and before the evening balloon glows.

   Of course we don't need to tell you where to start: You start at the World Renowned Albuquerque Photographers' Gallery in Old Town. Even if no one in your group is interested in buying fine art photography, it remains the place to begin. It is, in fact, the place where Albuquerque began. The Gallery probably sits atop the site of the original church, erected in 1706. That's the church that Don Francisco Cuervo y Valdés built after he and about 30 families moved south from Bernalillo and founded Alburquerque. (The evidence is strong that he fudged the numbers when he reported to Mexico City and Spain that he had enough people for a church. He probably figured that, by the time anyone could get here to check on him, people would do what people do and the population would increase enough to make it all legal in the eyes of the Church.)

   After exploring the Gallery, it will be time to stroll the Plaza. (Please remind your out-of-town guests that locals never call it “The Square”.) At the west end of the Plaza they will find a set of markers which briefly and accurately set forth the broad outlines of the history of Old Town. The cannons at the east end of the Plaza are replicas of the mountain howitzers the Confederate soldiers buried while scurrying back to Texas after their defeat at the Battle of Glorieta Pass in 1862. (It wasn't the first time Texans invaded New Mexico. For instance, they tried in 1841, intending to steal the Santa Fe Trail but, like Coronado before them, got lost. Then, after ascertaining their location, headed for Santa Fe, but were soundly defeated by the New Mexican army and marched off to Mexico City in chains.

    Take a look inside the current church, began in 1793, right after the first one crumbled. The church is almost always open and they welcome visitors. Then head east to the Albuquerque Museum. On the north side of the Museum is some of Albuquerque's finest public art. Show your guests the multi-piece sculpture of the Oñate expedition depicting the struggles of conquest. Then walk a few steps west into the peaceful spiral garden commemorating the Ancestral Puebloans who were here first. And don't miss the multi-piece sculpture of everyday Americans just to the south of the garden designed by Glenna Goodacre, the New Mexican who also did the Womens' Vietnam Memorial in DC.

   Then there is the jewelry show inside the Museum (Ending October 14th). Plus the room of art by the Taos artists. And the mosaic tile mural over the entrance to Old Town depicting night fading into sunrise.

   We haven't even left Old Town yet. We still have the Rattlesnake Museum, shops, food, the Natural History Museum, and Explora! for the kids.

   Then take your guests to the BioPark. Show them the Japanese Gardens and the glass pavilion with its Mediterranean sea coast and Chihuahan Desert exhibits. And curandero farm behind the glass pavilion and the Moorish gardens and the Model train! Then the Aquarium which follows aquatic life from the headwaters of the Rio Grande to the Gulf of Mexico.

   And the zoo! Don't forget the zoo. You can tell the quality of a city by the quality of its zoo and Albuquerque has a great zoo. Ride the train from the BioPark to the Zoo and back.

          [Ed. Note: No sentence fragments! Stop it.
           Author's Riposte: No time! I'm too busy here for
complete sentences.]

   Then there is downtown. Take them for a walk around the Convention Center to see the mosaic mural that surrounds the entire building. And the statue of Senator Chavez listening to a constituent. And the other Goodacre sculpture in front of the Hyatt. And Central Avenue. And the Telephone Museum.

   I'm running out of time and still haven't discussed all the Open Space hikes, bicycle trails, the Open Space Visitor Center, the New Mexico Veterans Memorial Park, Nob Hill, the Rio Grande Nature Center. (In that Visitors' Center show them the Laura Gilpin photographs of the Great River.) Then there is the old Municipal Sunport building, the Bottger Mansion where Frank Sinatra once sang at a wedding and Pretty Boy Floyd hid out. The Kimo, the Railyards, the rattlesnake sculpture on south University, the Maxwell Museum and Zimmerman library on UNM's main campus, the Gutierrez-Hubbell house, the National Hispanic Culture Center, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, the Petroglyphs, Tingley Beach, the BUGarium, the Rose Garden, the Tram, the Atomic History Museum, and I'm out of breath and time and space and still there is more to do in Albuquerque. (Should your guests think they want to go to Santa Fe, remind them that Santa Fe has less public art and more expensive, but not better, galleries.)

   Nothing to do in Albuquerque, my foot!

_____________
*FOG is our highest honor. It stands for “Friend of the Gallery” and we don't hand it out to just anyone.

“If you want to make more interesting pictures, become a more interesting person.”

Jay Maisel

Gallery News

Special First Friday Event for Balloon Photography

For First Friday this month we feature two of our artists talking about how to photograph the Balloon Fiesta and get shots other than the standard issue photographs of the balloons. Knate Myers will talk about both still and time-lapse photography of both daytime and evening shots. He will be followed by Urey Lemen talking about good methods to photograph the fireworks.

As always, we'll serve light refreshments. That is this Friday, October 5th. We'll be open until 8pm or later. Knate and Urey will talk beginning at 6:30. Bring your guests. They will thank you when they get home and discover that they have wonderful photos of their time here, thanks to Urey and Knate.

Urey Lemen Show

     Urey Lemen is one of three artists showing at the Corrales Art Center at 4940 Corrales Rd. It is located in the strip mall just North of the fire station. The opening reception is from 1-4pm on Oct 7th. The show runs to Nov. 15th. More info at www.corralesartcenter.org.

Stan Ford's Busy Month

     Stan Ford speaks on October 9th to the Santa Fe Photography Group. That's open to the public and is somewhere in Santa Fe. He'll also judge the “Nature” competition at the the Enchanted Lens Camera Club on Oct 18. That meeting is open to the public and somewhere in Albuquerque. Finally, for this month, Stan teaches a class for the city of Rio Rancho titled “Edit Your Photos Like a Pro.” That is a two-part program on October 17th and the 24th, somewhere in Rio Rancho and costs $25 per person.**
_________
**Information about where these talks and programs actually will occur is available at the Gallery and on Stan's website
(The Editor failed to provide the Author with that information.)

Marco Wikstrom's View Cameras

     Marco Wikstrom is preparing for a presentation/workshop on view camera basics, which he'll present in November at the gallery. He also just acquired an old 5x7” portrait camera, which he will restore and then photograph Gallery members. The camera will be equipped with an air-operated Packard-Ideal 5-inch shutter and 12 to 16-inch barrel lens.

Awards

Both John Simonds and Kelly Haller received awards at the New Mexico State Fair this year.

Kelly's “Irises” and “Old Rusted Truck” received prizes.

John received awards for “A Contemplative Moment”, photographed during an afternoon in the Hagia Sofia, Istanbul, and for his “Blowing Sand and Cloud”.

Stan Ford got a pleasant surprise while waiting for his van to be serviced. He was thumbing though a copy of NPhoto magazine (A Nikon magazine from the UK) and discovered that his White Sands photo was in the Photographer of the Year feature, placing fourth.

Congratulations to all three! Come visit the gallery and see the photographs.

Workshops and Photo Excursions

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mini Tours and Workshops

All our announced workshops are full; however, we offer hour, half-day. and full day tours for photographers of all skill levels. Ask at the desk or call for current information. Sign up sheets are in the gallery.

Psst. Here's the block where we suggest that the best way to support the arts is to buy some.

“My pictures tell of my freedom of soul, of my emancipation from fear. I slowly found my power with the camera among the junipers and the tamarack pines of the high, storm-swept altitudes.”

Anne Brigman

Items of Interest

Anne Brigman Show

     The Nevada Museum of Art in Reno has a show this autumn featuring the work of the pioneering American photographer Anne Brigman (1869-1950). Invited by Alfred Stieglitz to join his Photo-Secession group, she was a pictorialist photographer who believed that what was in front of her camera (often only herself in the High Sierra of California)was not as important as the subjective feelings of the artist behind the camera. Rizzoli published a catalog of the show which consists of 250 of her images plus some of her correspondence and poetry.

     Accompanying the Brigman show is an exhibition entitled “Laid Bare in the Landscape” a collection of modern art created by women using outdoor nudes following in Brigman's footsteps of a century ago.

Saving the Grand Canyon

     It seems that the Grand Canyon needs saving by every generation.

Google

     Google has embedded metadata image rights in its photo search results thereby making it minutely more difficult to steal on-line images.

For Our Photographer Friends

     Many of our readers are photographers and, from time to time, we have articles or reviews that might be of interest to them. This month we have Part Two of an article by Chris Sandberg about photographing moving water.

Water in Motion — Part Two by Chris Sandberg

    From a technical perspective, the key to controlling how moving water will appear in your photographs is to move your camera out of its automatic modes and shoot in Shutter Priority. That means you get to decide how long the shutter will stay open, and the camera’s electronics decide what aperture (and possibly ISO) is necessary to capture a good exposure at that shutter speed. Canon and Pentax use “Time Value” or “Tv” as the shutter-priority setting; Nikon, Sony, Olympus, and Panasonic mark their shutter priority settings as “S.” If in doubt, check your camera manual to see how to move your main setting dial to shutter priority.

Using the shutter priority setting lets you directly “dial in” the shutter speed you decide will produce the effect you want in the image. To freeze action, you’ll generally need a shutter speed of 1/250 second or higher. One of the great advantages of digital shooting has over film is the instant review available to digital shooters. You can try a shot at 1/250 second, and immediately check the shot to see if you have completely stopped the action, or if you need to go higher to get a crisp freeze-frame effect. That shoot-and-review approach will let you be sure you have achieved the result you want before you leave your shooting location. Super high-speed shutter settings are not always necessary to get an effective freeze-frame image. The key is to experiment with several different shutter speeds and see which has come the closest to giving the look you were seeking before moving on to your next vantage point.

     If you are going for a smoothed-out effect, you’ll need to work with a shutter speed that reflects the speed of the water. For waterfalls, try counting the seconds it takes a drop of water to go from the top to the bottom of the falls, and start with a shutter speed that matches that length of time. A one-second shutter speed may be all you need to turn a gentle flow of water dropping down a waterfall into a ribbon of white. Again, plan on taking a series of shots with progressively longer shutter openings and review for the resulting effect.

     There is no rule that says you must shoot at either extreme to get a persuasive image; sometimes a middle speed setting best captures the the moment. A shot at 1/13 second, for example, may let you smooth out the flow of the water just a bit, but still be fast enough not to lose all the detail in the stream. The key is to experiment with different shutter speeds and observe the effect that each produces. Shooting digitally gives you the freedom to take a series of shots at incrementally different speeds and judge the results at the scene. A good learning experiment for you is to set up your camera on a tripod at a scene with fast-moving water, and take eight or ten shots at shutter speeds ranging from half a second to 1/1000 second. Your review of that sequence will give you a good working feel for shutter speeds.

Photograph of the Month

Friend of the Gallery, a/k/a FOG, Willie Simmons was in town recently. He is a big-rig driver who stops by every time he has a chance and studies our photography. Driving big trucks is a tough job but he makes the job easier on himself by keeping an eye open for beautiful images. We'll be sharing a few of them with you over the upcoming months because they really good. Here are two: one from Orange, Texas and another from the Dalles of Oregon.

Willie writes, “Big rigging” the highways from my 8' perch still remains challenging and visually kinetic. Bearing witness to the transformation of the American landscape is at times awe inspiring and at other times fairly dolorous because you begin to realize that while we all understand and acknowledge that change is inevitable, some of those changes are a shock to the system.”

He says

Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when

to click the camera.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Newsletter Copyright © Kent Winchester, All rights reserved.
The Albuquerque Photographers' Gallery: The Southwest's premier gallery of contemporary fine art photography.

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Albuquerque Photographers' Gallery · 303 Romero Street Northwest, Albuquerque, NM · Albuquerque, NM 87104 · USA