Santa Fe Photography Workshop

The photography workshop ended today.  It was a lot of fun and I learned some useful techniques that I can continue to work on.  Just goes to show that old dogs can learn new tricks.  Now, whether the old dog can remember the tricks next week is yet to be seen. 

This morning at 7 AM we met at the corner of Paseo de Peralta (named after the guy that laid out the crazy Santa Fe streets) and Canyon Road.  Canyon Road is a little over a mile long and is just one art gallery after the other on both sides of the road.  At 7 AM on a Sunday morning it is very quiet on Canyon Road because artists don't tend to be early risers.  There was the occasional jogger, dog walker, or biker but almost no motorized traffic for the two and a half hours that we wandered up and down the road looking for the unusual to photograph.  It was an exercise in composition, exposure, and light. 

By 10 AM we were all back at the B&B workshop base to show and have critiqued what we considered our 5 best shots.  I had about 10 minutes to search through a couple of hundred images and select my 5 by viewing them on the camera's small LCD screen.  Talk about hard!  Although we were all on the same road it was surprising how very different our images were.  Everyone has different tastes and ideas of what makes a good subject.  Even when the subjects were the same, the images were very different.

A small prize was given for the best photo of the 2 days.  I didn't win, but I was proud to receive an "honorable mention".  Apparently Bob and Cynthia had some differences of opinion on which photo was the best.  My honorable mention was a very simple photo of a single unopened long-stem yellow flower against a clear blue sky.  Sometimes simple is best after all.  If you look at the photo pages you should see it.

Tomorrow morning we leave Santa Fe en route to South Lake Tahoe, CA.  We will be 3 days on the road, arriving at Tahoe on Thursday around lunch time.  We will be there for 2 weeks with a couple, Bruce and Karen, that we met on our Mexico caravan earlier this year.

Carol Ann and I are still not sure which route we will take to Tahoe.  One possibility is I-40 for a significant portion of the journey but the other route would take us through Las Vegas.  The I-40 route, although about 200 miles longer would be the easiest drive.  However, we have never been to Las Vegas so would like to go that way.  The problem with going through Las Vegas is the long uphill grade near Death Valley where the temperature will be 110 - 115 degrees!  We will sleep on it tonight and decide in the morning.  Wish us luck.