Fine Art Photography from Joe Leavitt

The Mission Trail Ysleta Mission Socorro and Guadalupe Missions

2009-10-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month I was in El Paso, TX, stuck at the airport waiting for my luggage to hopefully make the next flight. Having a few hours to kill, I wandered around until I found some local travel guides and maps. While El Paso doesn't offer the modern day excitement of my home town, Las Vegas, it does posses some interesting history and geography.

Originally present day El Paso was part of Spanish controlled New Mexico and never considered part of Texas until 1848. During the next two years battles were fought to claim the city as part of Texas, in order to take part in the lucrative Santa Fe trade route. The new state boundaries placing El Paso on the Texas side were drawn up in the Compromise of 1850.

Some of the places of interest nearby are:

I was already planning on visiting White Sands National Monument, but was unaware of the historic missions in the area. The airport had a handy little map that showed all of the missions on the trail, starting in El Paso, dipping into Mexico and ending in New Mexico. Not knowing the next time I'd make it out to this area, I decided to squeeze in some extra time for visiting the missions. The best information I found was a printed guide/map at the airport. I was able to find it online here as a PDF, but it appears to be an older version.

Here are a few websites that have an overview of some missions:

All in all it was a great trip and time well spent visiting the missions. Aside from their great architecture, they had great details as well. This image of a window is one of my favorites. You can see all of my photos from this trip on my flickr account.

Ysleta Mission Photos
Socorro and Guadalupe Mission Photos

Beauty All Around

2009-09-27T17:23:00.000-07:00

Okay, while it may sound a little romantic, there is beauty all around us. Usually we see it for the first time when we are wide awake enough to pay attention to the world around us. Maybe it's visiting a National Park for the first time, or some flowers along the side of the road on your daily commute. But after a while, we begin to take those items for granted and eventually forget about them, as they become commonplace in our eyes.

I've personally experienced it time and time again. Usually I notice it after a month or two, but this week I discovered a place I had written off for almost my entire life... Lake Mead. Sure, it's a nice place to visit on a hot day in Vegas, especially if you have a friend with a boat! (Anyone?) But locals make jokes about the murky water and how horrible tasting the fish must be. After all, it's fed by the Muddy River, among others, so it has a lot of silt and gets dirty looking rather quickly when you wade in from the shore.

Last week I was skimming over a list of local parks, looking for places to visit and photograph. Reading down the list there were places like Red Rock and Floyd R Lamb State Park, both nearby, then I came to Lake Mead. "Why would I want to go there?", I thought. Not a very pretty place. Or is it? Maybe I've let a lifetime of negative reinforcement shape the image in my mind beyond how it looks in reality.

I decided that my best chance for a great photo, without spending days researching, was a sunrise photo across the waters of the lake. After that I pulled up Google Maps to find some location choices that would have me looking East across the water. Next I pulled up Weather.com to find out the sunrise time for the next morning, prepared my gear, set my alarm and headed off to sleep.

The half hour trip out to the lake was nice and peaceful during the 5am drive. Once on site, another 10 minutes of driving let me to a great location with the exact view I was looking for. The sky was full of clouds and hopefully they would catch some color with the rising sun. It exceeded all of my expectations and I was able to capture this beautiful image along with a few others! The others are in my gallery at http://bit.ly/ybpJj.

If you have time, stop and look around. Maybe there's some beauty in life you've started taking for granted and need to see again for the first time to truly appreciate!

Overnight in Alamo, Nevada

2009-09-14T15:48:00.000-07:00

What to do? What to do? I know! Drive to Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge and take some photos! Pahranagat is just South of Alamo, NV or 100 miles North of Las Vegas. There are three parts to the refuge. The upper, middle and lower parts. Right now, only the lower section has water, but the nice thing is, that's where all of the birds are, and there are hundreds of them. Unfortunately they scare very easily. You can see my photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeleavitt/sets/72157622248459677/

One nice benifit from staying overnight was how many stars you can see at night when you're so far away from the city. Sometimes I forget just how beautiful the night sky is. I'll have to head out before long and try my hand at night photography.

Since I didn't plan to stay any more than a few hours. I had to buy a few necessities at the local grocery store in Alamo. Fortunately they have reasonably priced items and just about everything I needed. Driving home I made the decision to assemble and store an "Unexpected Travel" kit in the car for just such an occasion. Here's what'g going in the kit so far...

Unexpected Travel Kit

Change of Clothes
Basic Toiletries
Nail Clippers
Energy Bar
Water

This is by no means an emergency or distater recover kit. Think I left out something vital? Let me know!

Grand Circle

2009-09-09T15:43:00.000-07:00

After having uploaded all of my images prior to 2009 and reflecting on the places I've been, it made me think of the Grand Circle. Most people are familiar with the parts that make up this section of the U.S. Southwest, but many are not familiar with the name. The Grand Circle is an area that encompasses parts of five states: Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Nevada. This area is home to some great parks, including: the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, Lake Powell and Arches National Park. In my opinion it's well worth it to take a few minutes to research online and get more familar with this scenic area. Where to start? Google is usually my first stop. Here's a great road trip I found and it starts from Las Vegas!

Red Rock and Mt. Charleston

2009-09-08T17:46:00.000-07:00

These are the first of the 2009 photos that will be showing up in the gallery section. I started with the most recent images since I've been actively working with them. In the coming weeks I'll post the photos from my trip to Vienna and maybe even the Las Vegas strip. While I'm still working on the overall layout of the site, I feel it's finally starting to come together. To photograph or work on the website? Hmmmm...

http://www.joeleavitt.com/gallery