So traveling home from TLS I decided to head to New Mexico and cruise around to see what I could find.  And I found Encino, NM.  Neat little place with some of my favorite subjects old building and signs.

First place that caught my eye was this abandoned Post Office.  Great part, it still had a working mail slot.

Just down the street was an abandoned motel with and I quote “Lo Low Rates”  Probably why they went out of business.

More from the road trip home tomorrow…

Captured with Nikon D700 24-70f2.8 on Lexar digital film

So this is a shot back from when I was in New Mexico in January that never made it onto the blog back then.  But since I am getting ready to head that way again on my way to my buddy Jeff Lynch’s Texas Landscape Safari next week, I decided to go back through some images to see if there were places I wanted to go revisit.  I found this image in the archives and realized that I had done nothing with it at this point.  So I started playing around and decided on a solution to make a neat image.

So first off I decided to start this out as a 1 shot HDR editing the image in Photomatix 3.1, and got what you see below:

So it is overdriven and has some funky halos and blues going on not to mention a TON of noise that got introduced in the process.  So I went from here, convert the layer into a Smart Object and started the real work.

Step 1 was to drop the image in Nik’s Dfine 2.0 to axe the noise from the image.

Step 2 was to go into Nik’s Silver Efex Pro and finish the image how I wanted.  Up top is the final result.

Enjoy and have a great weekend.

If you went to Photoshop World in Vegas at the end of last year and made it to the Art of Digital Photography Panel you would have got to have seen the Master of Self Projects Joe Glyda do an amazing photo slide show based on just “looking up.”  Seeing what is above you because sometimes you are so busy looking straight ahead that you miss the world going on around you.

So while I was in New Mexico, I decided to take a bit of time and look down.  While I didn’t find as much as I would have liked I did find a few things that were fun to shoot.

First up with this old water meter cover that while it didn’t do anything for me in color worked created with a bit of Silver Efex Pro’s Holga filter added, with a few modifications of my own thrown in.

The 2nd, and slightly more odd is this old set of can opener keys from (at least what I can figure) is the remnants of an old sardine can that was laying on the porch floor boards of an old house.

So while I didn’t find much on my little self project in New Mexico I leave you with this thought.  Make sure you take time to really see what is going on around you in the world.  You may pass by the photo of a life time if you don’t stop and take a look around.  With our busy lives these days it isn’t always an easy thing to do, but I encourage you to try…

Images Captured with 1D Mark IIN 16-35f2.8 on Lexar digital film

While I was having a recovery day from running around all over New Mexico I saw a billboard sign that had a display for the War Eagles Air Museum in Santa Teresa New Mexico, and decided I needed to head over there and check it out. This place is inside a huge airplane hanger, and it didn’t just have amazing restored war planes it had a very nice car collection as well.

Main prop on an Avenger.  This was the isolated shot that I was looking for to control the background.

T-28 Trojan Prop

To give you an idea of what the inside of the hanger looked like, below is a wide shot of a P-38 engine and prop. Take a look at the background.

So the car collection at the War Eagles Air Museum is just as impressive as its War Plane Collection. And after playing around a bit with the planes my attention turned to the cars.

Front hood ornament off and Auburn. Once again thinking about background control. About 15 feet behind this car is a TF-51 Mustang, but you would never know it.

With the way the background and ceilings were staying tight and looking for details in the cars and planes paid off.  Had a great time at the Museum.  If you do find yourself there go and take some time to really take in the history, and some fun shots.

Planes Captured with 1 D Mark IIN 70-200f2.8

Cars Captured with 1 D Mark IIN 16-35f2.8 II on lexar digital media

One of the off the beaten path adventures that I took lead me to a quite little ghost with no tourists in it called Lake Valley.  When I rolled up the gates were getting ready to close, but the caretakers were incredibly nice and let me hang out for a while.   Lake Valley has an interesting history that goes back a long  time (1887) when there was a population in the town of 4000+ people.  It hit it off originally as a Silver mining town but then Manganese was discovered an they mined it there right up through WWII.  At this time it is in the process of being part of an archaeological study, so there were a lot of neat things just laying around that you might not often see.

First up the Cattle Rustler’s house.  Funny thing about this shot.  The brick work in the foreground was part of what was left of the town jailhouse.  Funny story behind it is this.  Even though cattle rustling was illegal in those times the rustler never saw the inside of the jailhouse, because he was the source of fresh meat in the town.  What’s that old saying “you don’t bite the hand that feeds you?”

Some of the old water storage tanks that supplied the town with water and supported the mines.

Back of the Cattle Rustler’s house with doors that have almost blending into the walls.

Ok, so this may not be the quintessential  ghost town shot with lazy-e-boy barcaloungers,  but for some reason I had to take this shot.  One of the care takers was telling me the story of this abandoned house and it was pretty amazing.  Not because of the house, but its former owner.  Not to go into a long story but the owner lived hear for close to 94 years is memory server me, and came to the camp when he was 2 and was a valuable source of information about the town and its going on.

Lake Valley is well off the path only getting about 1000 visitors a year.  So if you are in the area look it up and stop by.  The place is great and the caretakers are very nice and are fountains of information.

Captured with 1D Mark IIN 16-35 f2.8 II on Lexar digital media