Introduction
This trip combined a little bit of business and a whole lot of photographic enjoyment! It was my first visit to New Mexico and it sure was worthwhile. On the way south, I stopped off in Los Angeles for a day to attend a Hasselblad product launch. Hasselblad USA was showing their latest line of digital backs and medium format SLRs. Exciting new products and well worth the stopover for me. From there, it was onward to New Mexico ultimately ending with a total of 8400 km driven through 10 states - Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Idaho.
In addition to some location notes, following are also links to a panoramic image gallery, a Quicktime VR interactive panoramic view of White Sands National Monument and several time-lapse movies.
Additional
Galleries & Media
(movies
requires Apple
Quicktime 7.0 and will open in a new window)
| Stitched Panorama Gallery: | Each photo in this gallery is comprised of multiple individual images that have been stitched together to form a seamless, high-resolution panoramic image. |
| White Sands QTVR: | This 360 degree Quicktime VR movie was shot at White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. Once it finishes loading in the new window that opens, you can click & drag inside the movie frame to rotate the field of view and use the + / - buttons on the controller to zoom in and out as well. |
| Driving through Nevada for 1 hour and 48 minutes, one frame shot every 6 seconds. Played back at 15 fps and turned into a 1min 11sec time-lapse movie. Time speed-up factor is 91x - equivalent visual driving speed is 9,100 km/h or 5,650 mph! | |
| This unplanned time-lapse sequence was shot during an evening's "flight of the bats" at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. The frames were shot over a period of 15 minutes and then sequenced into this somewhat erratic time-lapse movie at 10 fps. | |
| VLA Time Lapse: | This time-lapse sequence was shot at the Very Large Array radio telescope facility in New Mexico. The sequence duration was 14 minutes with one frame shot every 8 seconds. Played back at 10 fps. Notice the service vehicles driving back and forth as well as the distant dish (second from the left) rotating into alignment at the start of the movie. When the movie reaches the end, if you press play again, you can see all the dishes "jump" slightly to the right as playback resumes from the beginning. That allows you to see how far the dishes have tracked the sky to compensate for the Earth's rotation over 14 minutes. |
Location
Notes
The following notes describe the locations seen in the main New Mexico 2005 image gallery. They are presented in the same sequence that the images appear in the main gallery. Listed after each heading is a link to the thumbnail page where the images for that location start. Clicking on the heading title will open a new window and take you to the official website for that location. Below is an index, allowing you to jump directly to the desired spot on this page.
Index of
Locations
Pinnacles
National Monument (Gallery: Page
1)
About an hours drive due south of San Francisco in California lies this fascinating park. Its towering spires, caves and rock formations are the remnants of an ancient volcano. Many trails wind through this scenic park offering lots of opportunities for photography. Photos in the gallery were taken on the High Peaks and Condor Gulch trails.
Chiricahua
National Monument (Gallery: Pages
1-4)
In the the south-eastern corner of Arizona, this spectacular park is nestled high in the mountains of the Coronado National Forest. Its scenery is comprised of towering rock pinnacles, balanced rocks and other unusual shapes with lush forests of Ponderosa Pine, Douglas Fir, Apache Pine and Mexican Pinyon Pine trees growing between all the amazing formations. Photos in the gallery were taken on the Echo Canyon, Hailstone and Massai Point trails.
White Sands National Monument (Gallery: Pages
4-5 and 6-7)
South-central New Mexico is home to these extraordinary sand dunes. This huge expanse of white gypsum sand covers 275 square miles of desert and are the largest dunes of the kind in the world. The bright white sand can often look misleadingly like snow in photographs and if conditions are right, colour from the sky and sun can turn these highly reflective dunes a variety of amazing hues - blue, yellow, pink, orange and more. I was so fascinated by the photographic potential there, that I visited White Sands on two separate occasions during my trip.
The first series of photos (pages 4 and 5) were taken near sunset slightly to the south-west of the "Heart of the Sands" before reaching the end of the road. The second set (pages 6 and 7) were taken on and around the vicinity of the Alkali Flats trail at the monument's heart. A severe thunderstorm made for some truly dramatic skies however the frequent approach of aggressive lightning meant running back to my truck for cover numerous times during the evening! Jogging across the dunes, several times for a kilometre or more, while carrying nearly 40 lbs of camera gear, made for a tiring evening of photography! However the photos I got made it all worthwhile, don't you think?
Franklin Mountains State Park (Gallery: Page
5)
El Paso, Texas, literally wraps around the southern tip of this dramatic mountain "island" rising from the floor of the Chihuahuan Desert. I met up with my friend Yvette, who lives in El Paso, and we hiked the steep Cottonwood Spring Trail. It was unseasonably hot for mid September, with temperatures nearing 40 degrees Celsius! After the strenuous climb in the heat with all my camera gear, the springs were, shall we say, somewhat disappointing and amounted to little more than a small puddle of water! However, the water did allow for some lush greenery in the midst of this desert terrain and the definite highlight of the hike was seeing (and photographing) the numerous hummingbirds near the springs. That, and the nice shaded bench at the top of the trail to rest and cool off after the somewhat grueling climb. In the end however, the highlight just may have been the company!
Guadaloupe
Mountains National Park (Gallery: Page
5)
In Texas, east of El Paso and bordering with New Mexico are the Guadaloupe Mountains. One is more or less limited to exploring the park only via hiking trails as there are essentially no roads leading into it. Since I was basically just passing through on my way to Carlsbad Caverns, I only took the time for a fairly brief hike of the Smith Spring Trail, starting at the historic Frijole Ranch. There is quite a diversity of vegetation due to the numerous springs in the area. Based on what I had read, I was expecting to see more wildlife on the spring trails, however apart from a few lizards and some very shy birds that never really showed themselves, there was unfortunately nothing much to be seen when I was there.
Carlsbad
Caverns National Park (Gallery: Pages
5-6)
My main purpose in visiting Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico was to see the amazing "Flight of the Bats" that occurs nearly every evening in August and September. This time of year, baby bats born earlier in the summer join with migrating bats from further north and the resident bats in Carlsbad for a truly spectacular display. Just after sunset, hundreds of thousands of these Mexican free-tailed bats spiral out of the entrance of the caverns, on the way to their nightly feast of insects and moths. The flight can last close to an hour and after the first 15 minutes or so, one notices a warm, musty smelling breeze coming from the cave entrance from all these bats flying out.
There is an amphitheater built just above the cave entrance which can accommodate several hundred people, with nightly talks given by park rangers prior to the flight beginning. When I was there, the bats were actually 45 minutes later than normal in leaving the caverns and this made for very low light levels and difficult photography! However it truly was a memorable experience and I hope to return there some day. A big "Thank You" to my friend Yvette for making me aware of this event!
VLA Radio Telescope Facility (Gallery: Page
7)
In the middle of nowhere about 50 miles west of Soccoro, New Mexico, lies this impressive array of radio telescopes. The 28 large, independently steerable radio dishes of this array can each be moved on a huge Y-shaped track (each arm is over 20km long!) allowing for optimal placement depending on what type of observations are being performed. My photos were taken along the permitted walking tour route. You may recognize the VLA from the movie "Contact" with Jodie Foster - many scenes were filmed there.
El Malpais
National Monument (Gallery: Pages
7-8)
In west-central New Mexico are the El Malpais lava beds - part of this small national monument. Photos were taken on the Lava Falls trail and Sandstone Bluff's Overlook.
Bisti / De-Na-Zin Wilderness (Gallery: Page
8)
Unfortunately my visit to the Bisti Badlands in north-western New Mexico was cut short by some very ugly weather and heavy rain. This areas boasts some amazing hoodoos and other interesting rock formations. Definitely on my list of places to revisit in the future!
Aztec
Ruins National Monument (Gallery: Pages
8-10)
Despite the name, these ruins were not built by the Aztecs of central Mexico. Due to their complexity, early settlers mistook the structures of this Ancestral Pueblo for Aztec ruins and the name has stuck ever since. This site is truly impressive with a huge number of rooms, walls and connected structures. In the 1930's an archeologist working on the site supervised the full reconstruction of the great kiva (a place of worship) which was excavated in the central plaza of the ruins. The well-finished interior shots in my gallery are taken inside this reconstructed kiva. These ruins lie just outside the town of Aztec, less than 20 miles north-east of Farmington, New Mexico.
Mesa Verde National
Park (Gallery: Page
10)
Mesa Verde, in the south-west corner of Colorado, boasts some of the best preserved cliff dwellings in the U.S., constructed by the Ancestral Pueblo peoples. There are a large number of independent sites with many of impressive complexity and breathtakingly set in undercuts of the cliff walls lining the canyons of the park. Again, my photography was cut short due to bad weather and I did not have a chance to explore the park to the extent I had hoped. Definitely on my list of places to revisit too!
Dead Horse Point State
Park (Gallery: Page
11)
Just north-west of Moab, Utah, and bordering on Canyonlands National Park, this small state park lays claim to some of the most spectacular vistas I have ever seen. These photos were taken right at sunrise and I shared the view with several other photographers as well as a film crew from the History Channel.
Arches
National Park (Gallery: Page
11)
Slightly north of Moab, Utah, this park features some of the most diverse variety of rock formations I know of. Spires, fins, balanced rocks, pinnacles and petrified dunes can all be found as well as a higher density of natural arches than anywhere else in the world. From the smallest arches, with 3 foot diameter openings, to the largest, such as the 306 foot long Landscape Arch, the park has over 2000 arches within its bounderies!
Weather, and the need to return home, prevented me from spending much time in the park on this trip. The photos you see were taken at the Park Avenue Viewpoint and at the Rock Pinnacles area of The Great Wall just north of the Petrified Dunes viewpoint.
Mike Mander, October
2005
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