Day 6

Santa Fe and ABQ's commuter train, the Rail Runner. The station is about 1/3 mile from my apartment, giving easy access to the much larger city of Albuquerqe Abquerque Albuquerque

Today was the second half of Safety Day, with a lecture from Monona Rossol. Her four hour lecture covered LOTS of interesting material, safety with chemicals, toxicity, hazardous materials, and so on. She openly admitted that her boring material wouldn't survive without a creative and fun delivery, and she definitely was creative and fun with her work. One of the things I took away from her lesson was "Just because the chemical says non-toxic, doesn't mean it's not toxic. It simply means that it hasn't been tested for toxicity. They can put whatever they want on the label." If a chemical has been proven toxic, then the company can simply replace that chemical with an equally toxic, but un-tested chemical, and continue to call it "non-toxic".

Ended up coming home around 2pm and had a late lunch. I picked up some stir-fry veggies from Whole Foods the other day, and some chicken from Trader Joe's. Having no idea how I was going to cook them, I diced up the veggies some more, and threw them into a pan with some olive oil and Jane's. I let them cook for a few minutes while I chopped some chicken thighs into smaller pieces. I realized I needed flavor, so I grabbed some Gyoza sauce I had in the fridge and added it to the veggies. I dumped the veggies into a bowl, and added a little more oil and the chicken to the pan, with two cloves of minced garlic (fresh, none of that powder crap) and some more Jane's. After a minute, I added some more Gyoza sauce and let the whole thing simmer. Just before the chicken finished, I added the veggies back in and stirred the whole thing.

It came out awesome. Freakin' great. Didn't expect that at all.

The sun was starting to set when I wanted to make another run to Whole Foods (I ran out of strawberry sorbet. If you can, get some. Check the ingredients for High Fructose Corn Syrup and don't buy it if it has it. It should only have 5 or 6 ingredients if it's done right). I was going to walk the mile or so, but Juan let me borrow his car, which also let me get some more groceries. On my way back I realized I hadn't shot any photos today, and the golden hour was almost gone. I quickly grabbed my camera to find something to shoot while I still had light.

For those who haven't visited Santa Fe, here's my one-week appraisal of the city itself: It feels like there was a big boom in the 1970's, and Santa Fe exploded in growth, where lots of buildings were constructed or updated. Then everything stopped. From a photographic standpoint, there's lot of pollution: Street lamps, power lines, buildings close together. Santa Fe itself is also, in relative terms, not on a "mountain", rather it's surrounded by mountains. There are no cliffs to go to and get a good shot (not within walking distance) so I had to hike, burning my golden hour to find something to photograph.

Near Whole Foods is a park about the size of two acres. There are railroad tracks that pass nearby, which I thought would be cool to photograph. I also knew they ran south towards my apartment, so I walked down Marquez and found the tracks. With no ambient light to find things to photograph, I decided to frame the Rail Runner sign on the setting horizon. The shutter was set to 5 seconds to try and soak up as much remaining ambient light as possible. It was in the last minutes of the golden hour, and I was rapidly coming up on blue hour. Still wanting some of that stray amber, I cranked my white balance and was fairly happy with the result.

The Rail Runner seems really cool, a great and cheap way to get into ABQ. They have a student discount which gets me to and from downtown ABQ for $3, and the trip is about an hour. It reminds me a lot of the MARC service back in MD, and my trips to and from DC for lighting work. The Rail Runner runs about half as often as the MARC, but it does run on weekends.

Tomorrow is a day off, with a party in the Cantina at 6. See you then!

-Matt

P.S. - As a treat for reading this far, have a look at my first timelapse of the season, shot off the back deck. It's three hours of timelapse in about 20 seconds. Yes, it really is that nice. All day. I think my next one will be of the back deck itself, showing the hustle and bustle of a normal day. Click Here -> June 3rd, Back Deck