Ghost Ranch
Ghost Ranch is a 21,000-acre retreat and education center located close to the village of Abiquiú in Rio Arriba County in north central New Mexico, United States. Georgia O'Keeffe had a home and a studio there, and it was the subject of many of her paintings.The main ranch area is surrounded by high sandstone cliffs. The setting is both beautiful and spiritual. Many artists have spent time there, and it was a real treat to spend time photographing scenes that Georgia O'Keeffe painted. You will notice most of the images on this page are in black and white. As I captured images and began to do the normal post processing, I realized that it is very difficult to capture the colors in the way that they appear in O'Keeffe paintings. A comparison of the natural colors and those used in her paintings shows her remarkable creativeness as an artist.
This image is of the cliff slot and pyramid features in the sandstone wall above O’Keeffe’s house at Ghost Ranch. She painted these features both together and separately. Painters have an advantage over photographers because they aren’t constrained by reality. Her pyramid paintings show the pyramid as a stand-alone feature. No cliff in the background!
One thing our western landscape often has are great clouds. Big, white puffy ones. But also threatening ones. My visit to Ghost Ranch was in May, thunderstorm season in our part of the world. And yes, we had a shower shortly after I took this shot.
It rained almost very evening we were at Ghost Ranch except for the last day. We got some great evening light shining on Kitchen Mesa.
Juniperus monosperma is a species of juniper native to western North America, in the United States in Arizona, New Mexico, southern Colorado, western Oklahoma, and western Texas, and in Mexico in the extreme north of Chihuahua. It grows at 970–2300 m altitude (Wikipedia). The juniper produces chemical species that repel insects. As a result, after death their limbs decay very slowly. Dead trees provide artistic opportunity, and like DNA, no two are alike. I was unable to resist this one.
This tree is located close to Georgia O’Keeffe’s home in Ghost Ranch. She painted dead junipers several times. As I mentioned above her colors were quite unique, almost impossible to obtain in a photograph. I also include my color version of the same image, along with one version of her paintings. (This is from the Georgia O’Keeffe museum in Santa Fe and I am showing it under the “Fair Use” doctrine which allows for non-commercial educational purposes. I will not sell prints of this image.)
