Desert Tango

I recently travelled to the Dubuque, Iowa area to photograph a wedding for my friend Bekah Porter and her now-husband Chris Sandy. Strangely enough I was there over 10 years ago for my uncles wedding, and upon my return I remembered how beautiful of a place it was. Gently rolling hills, rivers, a waterfall and the lush Iowa countryside made for a perfect setting.

Admittedly, this is the first large wedding I’ve shot in over two years. In the pre-digital days, I used to shoot quite a few, but my work in the world of photojournalism took me away from that. I now see that my style and method are well suited to doing photojournalism style weddings and I’ve decided to make the jump back into things.

For this post I’m only including a couple of images, but if you’d like to see a larger gallery of images from the wedding, please go here.

I’ve been off the map for the past month or so.  By off the map I mean enjoying some of the more distant places that New Mexico has to offer. This past weekend a few friends and I went down to Ramah Lake in Ramah, New Mexico to test a new boat that I recently acquired; a rather large 18ft canoe, a lovely beast perfect for hauling three people and gear.

I hope to plan a trip with this thing soon, meanwhile we headed to the beautiful Ramah Valley for test run. Ramah Lake is a  man-made lake, and a shallow one too, so an algae bloom made the water a little funky. Nevertheless the setting for this lake, which drains water from the Zuni Mountains,  offers some spectacular red rock scenery.

After a while the water became a bit too much, so headed to Nutria Canyon, which is on the Zuni Reservation.  Nutria Canyon is an oasis in the desert and there are some wonderful photo opportunities here, but we arrived a bit too late to catch light streaming into the canyon. Fall would most likely be the best time with the yellow cottonwoods and red Virgina creeper. I was still able to make a few images that I liked here.

Last weekend, a few friends and I went to Moab, Utah for some mountain biking fun. I’m always reluctant to bring my camera on the trail, especially in a place like Moab, but on Sunday I mustered up the courage to stuff it in my Camelbak for our ride on the Slickrock Trail. In addition to the big drops and technical climbs, the wind turned out to be a big challenge as well. Standing on top of one the slickrock domes the wind actually moved our bikes at one point. So, while the camera did say in the pack for post of the ride, I did find a sweet overview with the Colorado River in the background.

Over the past 5 months I’ve made two trips to Oregon. It’s a truly beautiful place, and some of it stands in contrast to the southwest desert in which I live. Here’s a few of my favorites from my trip: