Mike Broadway – PhotoBlog

Senor in black, senorita in red

364 days without making a single image. Why?

To make a picture you have to have something to say, at least, that’s what I need. My faith in what I am doing with a camera, whether there is any point to my image making, ebbs and flows. It ebbs more than it flows; it ebbed quite suddenly after our 2010 New Mexico trip. The tide went out a long way, making for a dry and bleak year. The flow has returned reluctantly, reserved and uncertain.

52 weeks found the family back on vacation, back in the same Arroyo Seco, New Mexico, rental property, and back visting Santa Fe for the day. Being on vacation was not enough to blow the dust off the camera; the first click of the shutter did not come for another nine days.

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More reliable than my picture taking, the Fiesta de Santa Fe has been held annually since 1712, commemorating the recapture of the town from the Pueblo indians in 1692. Early in the nine day novena cycle of masses, the Procession of La Conquestadora escorts the “oldest statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the United States” from the cathedral to the Rosario Chapel a few blocks to the west. This year’s event began as a thunderstorm dropped welcome rain on the town, temporarily washing away the smoke of the Las Conchas wild fire burning around nearby Los Alamos.

To an ignorant outsider of modern liberal education and feeling, this ceremony is a dizzying challenge, triggering multiple political correctness alarms as helmeted conquistadors and flamenco dressed senoritas march past the Native American sellers of jewelry and pots arranged along the sidewalk in front of the Governor’s Palace. The truth of the feelings of all involved, participants and witnesses is more complex and subtle than a visiting Brit tourist from Texas can grasp.

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The physicists of Los Alamos might offer a description of quarks, strange and charming, but not the why. The TV news crews may offer film at ten, but not the why. Why did I stop taking photographs for a year? Why did I start again on July 3, 2011 and what does this image mean? Who can say what anything really means or why?

Arroyo Seco July 4th

The population of Arroyo Seco (1,149 in the 2000 census) doubles and returns to normal over a period of four hours around the town’s July 4th parade. Most of the locals and all of the vistors cram into the three block long main street. 2,000 people, children, costumes, dogs, stilts, bunting and flags, lots of flags. This photograph was made nearly two hours after the crush; this prime real estate was three deep when the first fire truck went past.

The Taos Cow, Arroyo Seco

I had my last early morning coffee at the Taos Cow this morning; tomorrow I’ll be packing the house up before joining the July 4th celebrations in Arroyo Seco so won’t be able to get to my regular table. It’ll probably be a couple of years before I get another chance, but I will be back.

Meadow grass, Arroyo Seco

We spent the day reading books interspersed with walks around the town of Arroyo Seco and ice cream at the Taos Cow. I am not going to worry about chasing the perfect desert storm photograph any more; that is simply not what this vacation has been about, it is not the aspect of New Mexico that mattered on this visit. This trip has just been about being in Taos and Arroyo Seco, and that has been plenty.

Shadow of the Mountain, dawn, Arroyo Seco

Posted more for its peculiarity than its formal quality; what appears to be a second ridge line behind the first is in fact the shadow of the mountain cast on the cloud around it.

I am happy to say that today did in fact, finally, render some more classic New Mexico images: desert, mountains and blue sky. I didn’t get my choreographed thunderstorm with dramatic skies but there are still two landscape shooting days before our vacation ends so there is still hope.

Reeds across the road, Arroyo Seco

This has definitely not been the New Mexico that I expected to be photographing. I had expected to be capturing images of big landscapes, deserts, storms, distant mountains. It’s not that New Mexico’s geography or climate has changed in the two years since we were last here; it’s the subtle differences in the location of our rental house, my daughters age, and the dynamics of having one of their friends along with us. Instead of piling the girls in the back of the car and driving out into the landscape we have been going to music festivals, rodeos, providing a taxi service to the movies, or reading books and walking two blocks to the ice cream store. I am not disappointed, just surprised.

Maybe there will be more landscape in the remaining three open days? Sunday is July 4th and will be filled with the Arroyo Seco parade and celebrations; that should be another good opportunity for photography but not for distant horizons. July 5th we drive home. So, three days to catch a storm over the desert, or maybe three days to just hang out with the kids? At 15 we only have a couple more family vacations before they flee the nest.