masters of the air
May 18, 2025
•
4 Comments
Living in the sagebrush biome for over twenty years tends to fine-tune one's senses. It is extraordinarily mesmerizing in color, smell, structure, and wildlife. Making time during the day just to let our eyes scan the tops of mile after mile of sagebrush in the same way one looks at ocean waves was nature's meditation. The sagebrush ecosystem "is t...
Read the Full Post »
design appreciation
May 12, 2025
•
2 Comments
Two brothers - Terry and Renny Russell - set out to discover the rugged wilds and themselves during another fraught time in United States history when the Vietnam War was raging, and free spirits and hippiedom were rampant. In 1967, their experiences and photographs became a wonderful jewel of a Sierra Club book titled On the Loose. The statement "...
Read the Full Post »
nothing like it
May 05, 2025
•
6 Comments
As far as tulips are concerned, the slot in my brain's drive of early memories that includes flowers is vacant. However, when grocery stores began carrying flowers of all kinds in arrangements and bouquets, tulips were almost always included. A tulip is a near-perfect cut flower, progressing from an oblong shape opening to a bowl, and lasting a rel...
Read the Full Post »
blooming
April 28, 2025
•
4 Comments
Despite the wind and dust that is typical this time of year in the southern Rocky Mountains, nature's bloom cycle continues. While living farther north in New Mexico, a regular photographic pilgrimage to the area in and around the mountain pass off of Highway 64 between Tres Piedras and Tierra Amarilla was part of life. It was the time when the wil...
Read the Full Post »
a beautiful planet
April 21, 2025
•
3 Comments
Tomorrow, Tuesday, 22 April, is Earth Day. This year's celebrations world wide will be the 55th anniversary of the event, founded by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. 1970 was a heady year in America, with non-stop protests against the Vietnam war, and less than two weeks later, four unarmed students were killed at Kent State University in Ohio by...
Read the Full Post »
fragrance remembered
April 13, 2025
•
6 Comments
There is something to be said about fragrance and its impact on memory. From year to year, I photograph the seasons as they change. Each time I photograph flowering fruit trees in the spring, I walk into the midst of blossoms, hear hundreds of bees as they fly from blossom to blossom, and the fragrance hits me. Yes. This is why I come back to them...
Read the Full Post »
feast for the eyes and soul
April 06, 2025
•
6 Comments
When a person has and shares her talent with others, I feel it should be acknowledged. In addition to a forty plus year career as a physical therapist, our friend Ingrid, is an extremely creative person. As another friend, Jim, said "Not every artist is a painter". So true. In addition to her many other skills, Ingrid has become a master tart desig...
Read the Full Post »
breaking through
March 31, 2025
•
2 Comments
Spring and March presented themselves in earnest last week with warm winds and sunshine. And all of nature knows this is the time for action. Vegetative growth from bulbs that wait patiently throughout the winter miraculously pushed through the hard, dry soil, and the blooms have arrived. Flowering shrubs and fruit trees are gradually joining the p...
Read the Full Post »
skills I do not have
March 23, 2025
•
6 Comments
During our many adventures in home building, my husband, Fred (primarily Fred) and I have built homes of wood, stone, and adobe, that were accomplished courtesy of his architectural, engineering, and design skills, along with my organizational and mud and mortar mixing skills. Darn good with a shovel, water, concrete, clay, and sand, and although t...
Read the Full Post »
the wild wind
March 16, 2025
•
6 Comments
It is perpetual, breathing life into every entity on this planet. The wind - whether we appreciate it or not, whether it destroys what humans and other living entities build, causing tragic loss of life, whether it contributes to deadly fires, whether it peppers our faces or legs, or whether it drives us mad - is a necessary part of life. The sprin...
Read the Full Post »
spring gifts
March 09, 2025
•
4 Comments
The vernal or spring equinox arrives on 20 March this year, but meteorological spring arrived officially on the 1st of March. If there was no record keeping or calendars, humans would count on the sky, weather, and other animals to tell when spring was coming. In the Rocky Mountain west last week, the full gamut of weather - including graupel, rain...
Read the Full Post »
art for art's sake
March 03, 2025
•
3 Comments
In 1818, Victor Cousin wrote in Cours de Philosophie "We need religion for religion's sake, morality for morality's sake, art for art's sake." Whether it came from someone lambasting art as a dodge or modern art as an aberration, I can remember hearing the phrase "art for art's sake" from a fairly early age. The fact of the matter is that art seems...
Read the Full Post »
signs of the times
February 23, 2025
•
5 Comments
Last Monday, 17 February, was Presidents' Day in America. Rallies were held around the country, including in Santa Fe. From government workers who had been suddenly and unceremoniously fired or "asked to clean out their desks", to those protesting Russia's war on Ukraine, in support of the Palestinians in Gaza, and of women's and LGBTQ rights, and...
Read the Full Post »
thinking white
February 16, 2025
•
2 Comments
A long-time friend and professor for whom I worked at the University of New Mexico (do not ask how long ago that was) emailed some weeks ago about the possibility of having a print made of one of my photographs. It was a group of double white lilies we had been gifted and which I proceeded to use as a photographic subject. The request sent me into...
Read the Full Post »
Rail Trail "Generations" mural
February 09, 2025
•
7 Comments
Fred and I first walked to this particular section of the Santa Fe Rail Trail near Santa Fe High School (between Siringo Road and St. Michael's Drive) in late October of 2022. Our friend and avid cyclist, Robert, had ridden by the mosaic mural under construction numerous times, and thought it would be a good idea to photograph the mosaic in progres...
Read the Full Post »
© Daryl A. Black