A Day, or Two in the Big Bend

Marfa Gallery

Texas Window

After driving 400 miles (7 plus hours) and getting home at midnight, catching up on email, editing photos, getting a few hours of sleep, and having take out deli lunch, it is time to post about my trip to the Big Bend area.

Tacos, Alpine, Soap Tree Yuccas, McDonald Observatory, boots, javalinas, U.S. Border Patrol, trains, deep blue sky, huevos rancheros, cattle ranches, Chinati Foundation, 80 mph speed limit, oil pump jacks, sand hills, Cracker Jacks, mysterious lights, Pecos River, Mt. Livermore, Creosote bushes, Marfa, adobe walls, horses, art galleries, football, screen doors, Food Shark, Cafe Bustelo, dogs and chickens, Fort Davis, Blue Agave, Andy Warhol, Hotel Piasano, Milky Way, mountains.

Life on the Plains

Rain To The West                                             2010  Mark Scantling

Today, as I was driving home to Amarillo from Lubbock, I was entertained by a series of distant summer showers across fields of cotton and corn. Usually in August, Texas heat has parched the landscape, especially in north Texas where we have lived for the last 33 years. One often expects to find Texas (any or all of it) sun-bleached, baking hot, and desolately barren. I won’t argue that it isn’t. But, I will say here on the southern plains I can see an aesthetic beauty as pleasing to me and interesting as anywhere else. NOT as majestic as some others to be sure – but the flatland has its own sense of serene beauty.

I think it might be a -Yin-Yang thing – Land and Sky…  The long, endless, flat earth balanced by the endlessly changing sky full of brilliant blue and/or forming and re-forming clouds and colors.

-Mark

[Side note]

While enjoying the distant showers today, I recalled a painting I did a few years ago about a summer storm that literally blew in to Santa Rosa, New Mexico – as we arrived at the edge of town:

A Summer Storm In Santa Rosa              2005   Mark Scantling

AT WOOD’S AND WATER’S EDGE

Slow Drifting                                                           Mark Scantling

Click to see:

AT WOOD’S AND WATER’S EDGE The Wetlands of the West Fork of the Trinity River

BACK STORY: I don’t go walking through the woods often enough. Too much time recently trying to make a dollar, and not enough time with my feet on the ground. Although it is the hottest part of summer, I think I should visit the Nature Center this week.

-Mark

Cool scenes for a hot day.

Winter Park, 1999                                             -Mark Scantling

Click to see:

Photographs from “The Last Day of the Past Century”

Stay cool!

-Mark

Outside In

Accessories, Digital Print, 2006                           -Mark Scantling

A boy and his camera,  on a rainy, early Saturday morning in Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas. The parking lots are empty, the bands and crowds are gone,  tattoo shops are closed. The streets are all mine.

Click to see:

Outside/In

Word on the street

In Chinatown, 2004  (from my collection of street scenes) -Mark Scantling

Store owners cupping their hands
To wave in the masses
Like creating a movement in water,
Like diving to the bottom of the ocean
In search of treasures to resurface
From the other side of the world.
The colors yellow and green.
The sidewalk smells warm.
The air, saltwater
And the metallic sweat
Of healing balls and chirping boxes.
Traffic mixes exhaust
With ducks roasting in their own fat
As the San Francisco
Rises in America,
As it always has,
From the East.

- from “Morning in Chinatown” by Suzanne Burns

June Brides

WAITING, Wedding photography, Mark Scantling

It’s June – the month of weddings.  White silk satin,  Groom’s cake, the bouquet, a father’s toast, the first dance…

Pecos Daisies and Holy Ghost Canyon

Pecos Daisies, 1988, 8 X 12  black & white photograph,   -Mark Scantling

Afternoon clouds were gathering as we drove north along the Pecos River. By the time we got to the old adobe church, there was more cloud than light. I saw the splashes of light on the south side of the church and grabbed  my Nikon and 200mm lense to shoot the white arched-window frame. I overexposed to further darken the church for a moody feel. Finally a dagger of sunlight hit the daisies under the window and across the adobe at the corner of the church. If I had time, I would have used my tripod to get better focus and a sharper image. Overall though, I’m okay with the slightly softer focus.

Back story: East of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the Sangre de Christo Mountains, is a canyon called Holy Ghost, named presumably by the Spaniards who explored and settled the area. The canyon is in the Pecos National Wilderness Area. I visited the area the first time, in 1961 when I was 5 years old.  My parents rented a cabin for a week, and I learned about outhouses, wood stoves, trout fishing, and uncooperative horses. Very rustic! I also took my first photograph there with a Kodak Brownie.  Through the years, my wife and I have camped and visited several times. It is one of the most tranquil places I know – as well as being one of the best smelling because the canyon is filled with Douglas Fir, Ponderosa Pine, and at higher elevation, Aspens.  Great daytime hiking and nighttime stargazing. I suggest a good bottle of red to enjoy with your campfire.

-Mark

I think things are changing…

DALLAS, 2008  -Mark Scantling

Because I have a Jekyll and Hyde thing going on between my paintings and photography, I have decided to let 50 MILES TO COFFEE become a photo blog. I think the primary focus will be on pictures I take (or have taken) in and around Fort Worth, Texas. Staying true to my nature I will always deviate mildly, or wildly from any path I begin, and photos not related to my geographic surroundings will pop in from time to time – as will other things, thoughts, or ideas. With that said, let us begin.

Today’s photograph is titled, “Dallas” – which is NOT in Fort Worth, but is near enough to be considered  in my “geographic surroundings”. I like to poke around the Fair Park and Deep Ellum areas when I venture to our large neighbor to the east. On one such trip, I stopped to explore this abandoned grain elevator near Fair Park. I am drawn to textures, and it particular, architectural textures. The concrete elevators, with their curving silos and the light and shadows provided me with fun and interesting shapes, and colors.

When, back at home, I uploaded the photographs from the day’s shooting, I found myself coming back to this image. I finaly realized the similarity of this picture and the Anasazi cliff dwellings in the Four Corners area of the Southwestern U.S.

-Mark

Photo Friday

NOVEMBER LIGHT, 2004 -Mark Scantling

This picture was taken on my last visit to San Francisco in November, ’04. The weather had been beautiful the previous two days. Wednesday started out the same, but clouds began forming by the time I’d had my breakfast at Max’s and taken the long bus ride across town to the Legion of Honor Museum. I spent an hour viewing the exhibits – the Rodin sculptures were very enjoyable, and had lunch at the museum’s patio. Leaving, I took a moment to enjoy the view of the pacific, then I headed on foot, north, to find  beach access.

Ever the tourist – I toted my Nikon 35mm, Mamiya C-3 medium format camera, film, gear, etc. in my bag (about 20 lbs.). Ironically, this photo (my favorite from that day’s shooting) was made with my 3mp Nikon Coolpix I carried in my pocket. It turned out to be the workhorse from that trip.

As I entered the beach access the Golden Gate Bridge came into view. The mid-afternoon angle of the sun, and the clouds allowed the colors to pop. I grabbed this shot, then spent the next hour-and-a-half strolling along the shore shooting Baker Beach – awed by the views of the ocean, the beach, the bridge.  There was also a naked beach guy.

-Mark