Blue Rio Grande at Albuquerque
Not terribly interesting, but this is the Rio Grande near the north end of Albuquerque last March.
On the contrary, extremely interesting to me. For the subtle range of colors alone, before talking of anything else about it: from the blues in the river to the browns and violets of the bank.
It had been a dry winter so this is actually low for that time of the year. Now is lower yet, even though we've caught up to our normal rainfall. This area narrows down to a small channel, so it looks like quite a bit of water.
It does look like a proper river, indeed. Undammed, so to speak.
And I don't have the faintest idea what that piece of iron in the middle is.
For me, the piece of iron in the center is the making of the picture. Something to draw the eye, as one floats in the magical colors.
Dusk, a little crop and color temp correction in ACR.
And so beautiful to me.
I like the shadow from the bank on the upper right. And, although the violet shades in the dry brush in front of the line of trees make my eye linger, it is with a sense of completion that I look on up and see the blue sky through the bare trees, matching the serene blue of the water below the sky. Pictorially, the water in the foreground, but I have come to inhabit the scene and by now it is three-dimensional to me.
I haven't yet been able to define it in my mind, Aaron, but for me there is an identifiable commonality in all the three works you've shown at OPF these past few days.
I would almost, I think, recognize something done by you anywhere now. In the same way that I know immediately, "It's Mozart!" or "It's Bach!"--even in a piece I happen to catch, half-paying attention on NPR or the Classical Arts TV channel, and have never heard before.
I am so pleased to have seen this take of the Rio Grande in the north part of Albuquerque, in March, after a dry winter.
The shadows that streak the water give me a sense of the flowing currents. And the subtle violet tones on the far bank--at least on my monitor--remind me of the purple shades that I saw on the mountains which ring Albuquerque in 1989.
It's an image of great interest to me, indeed.
Mary