Santa Fe- Seeing the Sacred

The final assignment in my lensbaby class is a photo essay using mostly lensbaby images, and it can be either narrative or thematic.  One can’t walk around downtown Santa Fe without noticing churches and sacred images everywhere, so I chose to focus on this theme for my photo essay.

Seeing the Sacred

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Edge 80
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Nikon 18-200mm
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Lensbaby Sweet 35
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 Lensbaby Sweet 35

 

Santa Fe
Lensbaby Sweet 35
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Nikon 18-200mm
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Nikon 18-200mm
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Lensbaby Sweet 35
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Lensbaby Sweet 35
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Lensbaby Sweet 35
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Lensbaby Sweet 35

Notes:
The first image- I’m not sure what building this was!
The next two are the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis, and the third is a statue of Kateri Tekakawitha (1656-1680), the first Indian of North America to be promoted a saint. The simple cross was hanging over our bed.
The rest of the photos are from San Miguel Mission, the oldest church in the U.S., built between 1600 and 1620.

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Exploring Santa Fe

Last Sunday we celebrated my birthday in Santa Fe. We walked around the downtown taking in as many of the sights as we could in one day and sampling northern New Mexico cuisine.  Here are a some random detail shots gathered taken on our walk around the city; all were taken with my lensbaby.

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Kansas Minimalism

We are home now, after a LOOOOONG drive through Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico and a day off to celebrate my birthday in Santa Fe.  There are a lot of photos to go through- especially from Santa Fe, where I tried to take enough photos with my Lensbaby to satisfy the photo essay requirement for the last week of the class (even though I’m not a full participant and won’t be evaluated).

So today, I again celebrate the flat horizons and vast expanses of Kansas with these minimalist shots, both taken with the Edge 80 optic.

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Kansas Wheat

The drive across Kansas gave me an opportunity for an up close and personal view of a wheat field. My husband must have Kansas in his blood- I think the color version is his favorite photo from the trip.

20150529-MMA_6194_melinda_anderson 20150529-MMA_6195_melinda_andersonBoth were taken with the Lensbaby Edge 80.

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Rural

Driving across western Kansas yesterday, I snapped photos from the car as we went along, and a few are decent.  But Lonnie spotted this farm along the way and pulled off onto a country road so I could take my time and the photos would have a good chance of being in focus.  I love the barn and silo! I know I could never have been able to hack it as a country girl, but I love rural scenes.

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Country roads, take me home

20150527-MMA_5934_melinda_anderson-Edit-EditYesterday, my father-in-law, like earlier generations in his family, was laid to rest at the old cemetery at the end of this dirt road, overlooking the tiny Kansas farm community where he grew up.

Family members and friends gathered to say a last good-bye to Corky, who always called this peaceful corner of the world HOME.

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Portraits of Kiki

No longer having pets, I was eager to take some lensbaby photos of my inlaws’ 18 year old cat, Kiki. Normally she ignores me, but this time, she kept coming over to me while I was attempting to take her portrait.  I decided to go for a really shallow depth of field and just focus on her whiskers. My favorite is the first one.

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Lensbaby on the Road

I’ve been keeping my Lensbaby on my camera all the time, trying to get as much practice as possible.  When we are on a long road trip, we almost never stop for photos, so it has become my habit to take photos with my phone through the window as we drive along.  On this trip, I started using my big camera instead of my iPhone to take these photos.

One of the assignments in my Lensbaby class was to take photos of objects that are moving (using manual focus, the only way you CAN focus a lensbaby).  Although the subjects of my photos weren’t moving, the car certainly was! As we drove through eastern Colorado, I used the sweet35 optic to capture the scenery along the way.  My favorite photo is this landscape (I love the light), which is NOT in sharp focus. I used Topaz Simplify and some added textures to give it a painterly feel.

20150522-MMA_5591_melinda_anderson-EditThe next day, as we drove through the plains of western Kansas, I used the Edge 80 optic on my lensbaby, which I found fairly easy to focus at 60 plus mph.  The sky was very overcast and eventually gave way to heavy rain as we drove along.

20150523-MMA_5623_melinda_andersonLonnie knows I have a bit of an obsession with photographing grain silos and farms, so he actually took an exit so that I could take photographs of this one from the road instead of from a moving car!

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Golden Spotlight

The other evening, I glanced over at my entry hall as beautiful light from the setting sun cast a golden glow over my forgotten ranunculus arrangement on the cabinet. I am always complaining about the lack of good light in our house, so I felt compelled to run and get my camera and snap photo after photo until the light faded. My lensbaby Sweet 35 was on the camera- and of course I don’t remember what the aperture was set at- maybe f/4, which produced a lot of blur on the sides (more than I usually like).  The second shot shows my adjustment- pushing the bottles together to put more of the flowers in focus.  Closing down the aperture would have forced me to raise the ISO more than I wanted to in the excitement of the moment, so that was my speedy solution.

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Denouement

My peonies have bit the dust, but here are a couple more images from their glory days.

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Tomorrow or sometime later in the week I will post a couple images of their last days.

My lensbaby class officially begins today, plus I have FOUR meetings this week- so, over the next week or two, you will be seeing some photos from the (mostly recent) archives.

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