Mike Broadway – PhotoBlog

Edge - Third Visit - Bull Creek, Austin

Last weekend it rained in Austin. Radio DJs marveled between each set list; it was the lead story on every newscast Friday through Monday. Bull Creek flowed for the first time in five months; not deep, not fast, but magically, mystically.

Saturday afternoon I took the camera back to the creek for a third visit. The dusty brown rocks had greened; the algae had merely been waiting for moisture and not dead. Sunday turned cold and rained all day; a London day in Texas. Two inches for the weekend; not an end to the drought of the twelve driest months on record but a reminder that such a thing could happen and a relief from the possibility of more wildfires.

It may be false hope but we will take it just the same.

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.

The Good Cowboy

Once upon a time, some 60 years ago in fact, you knew the good cowboys from the bad ones by the color of their hats. Not even Hollywood stories have heroes anymore.

Trees and Ripples

Color is the first thing I see, the main thing I photograph. There is no obvious subject in this image other than color itself. If you look long enough you will find the sunlit pine trees and a breeze blown pond of the Colorado Rockies, but it could be anywhere, anytime.

This is another re-found picture, overlooked for seven years, for which I owe thanks to Adobe Lightroom’s all-in-one-place catalog view of my photographs. However, I am hesitant to praise Adobe too much or too soon; I will reserve judgement until after the just announced announcement of Creative Suite 5. Earlier this week, Adobe told the press that on April 12 it would tell the press about the still later release of CS5. The updated product suite will not be available on April 12th, that’s just the date when we will be told the release date.

What this manic game of marketing musical chairs means for me is that almost certainly, yet again and as predicted, I will have been forced to upgrade to the current release of Photoshop just in time to be too early to qualify for a free upgrade to the new release. So pretty much the only thing I care to hear announced on April 12th is that my March 1st CS4 purchase qualifies for an automatic CS5 upgrade.

I had to buy Photoshop CS3 just before CS4 was announced in order to be able to read the images from a Nikon D300 camera, I had to buy CS4 just before the CS5 fanfare to convert my license from Windows to Mac. That I am getting free use of of the Lightroom 3 beta is small consolation because I am going to have to buy that when the beta runs out; having got used to what it can do I am unlikely to be willing to give it up. The free beta is both a good way to gather product feedback and a still better way to get new customers hooked. Adobe knows what every street corner drug dealer knows: give away free samples and they will have no choice but to come back and buy more.

All in all though I should be grateful, and I am, that I can afford to buy the expensive equipment that demands this expensive software. Few are so lucky.

[April 5, 2010 – looking back at this post and Thom Hogan’s 2010 News and Comments archive I realize that my title probably borrowed too much inspiration from his news report on the subject. I’m am pretty sure I first learned of Adobe’s plans from reading his site and while the sentiments that it generated are my own I need to acknowledge their origin.]

Branched tree cascade, Rio Hondo valley

Returning to the series of motion blur images, this is another from the Rio Hondo valley off the road up to the Taos ski area.

My posting rate has regrettably dropped and is likely to be down until after thanksgiving.

The after-work energy that I have left after providing homework assistance is currently being applied to yet another reimplementation of the main Web site. The current site uses Ruby on Rails but that has proved less stable than I would have hoped in its shared server environment where I don’t control updates to the Gem packages. And, after using WordPress for this blog, I have realized both that PHP is just as “cool” as Ruby and that I would love to have the off-the-shelf functionality of a platform like Drupal. My biggest problem will be maintaining the existing URL population for SEO value.

Oh, and there’s the print set that I need to gather for a cooperative project. I have been procrastinating over that and should not put it off any longer.

Branched tree swimming, Rio Hondo valley

Election night now history, I will again return to the blur theme; still using pictures from this summer’s New Mexico trip and the trees along the Rio Hondo valley coming down from the Taos ski area.

At heart, I am interested in color more than form. Perhaps not color completely without form but that is a rare encounter in the fractals of the natural world that a camera sees. It is color made visible by form, rather than form made visible by color, that reaches into the deepest part of me.