Month: November 2023

New Mexico Landscapes

Last November I went on a trip to New Mexico to visit some family and it was as beautiful there as I was assured it would be. While I was there I did quite a bit of hiking around in different areas. There were two general areas, that were each their own separate ecosystems, that I visited. One of these was the mountains, and the other was the canyon, which was in a lower (though low is relative) desert area. Both were the sort of landscapes that would make going there (as a photographer) and not doing some landscape photography seem… kind of wrong. I hadn’t really done a ton of landscape photography before, but I’m pretty happy with some of the landscape type photos I took on the trip.

Mountains

The mountains were mostly covered with evergreen forest, interspersed with rocky outcrops and cliffs as well as rivers flowing down to the land below. Because of the season we went, there were some interesting ice formations around the rivers.

A ponderosa pine trunk in the foreground standing out against snowy evergreens. This was taken on the day we left; there had been a snowfall the night before, so everything was covered in snow, but higher in the mountains there was snow the whole time we were there.
This was a particularly rocky area we went through on the way out.
Another mountain scene with some sort of birches.
Rock formations like this one were pretty common in the mountains.

Canyon

The canyon we visited was the Rio Grande Gorge. I found a trail that went from the rim of the canyon down to the river, which we did on our last day there. The canyon area had lots of little shrubby looking trees (I think they were mostly just slow growing and sometimes stunted from the conditions they were growing in). I know some of the trees there were junipers, ponderosa pines, and pinion pines. It wasn’t really forested, though, and there were quite a few smaller bushy and herbaceous plants that I wasn’t familiar with (although I’m pretty certain a significant amount of it was sagebrush).

The Rio Grande Gorge from the bridge across the gorge.
A large boulder from one of the cliffs in the Rio Grande.
This was the trail we took into the gorge. You can see the switchbacks in the trail in this photo.
Another picture of the gorge from the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.
The gorge from within, about halfway down the cliff.

Of course, I took more than just landscape photos on the trip; I actually noticed I was switching lenses and settings quite a bit more regularly than I usually do since I was trying to photograph such a wide variety of subjects. In coming posts I’ll share more of the other kinds of pictures I was taking.

Forest Floor Berries

There are two different species of maianthemum that have been in the woods since I moved here (recently a third species has shown up, but that’s a story for later). Maianthemums (a genus also commonly known as false solomon’s seal) have a lot of interesting facets, but one thing I find particularly cool is their semi-ripe berries. When ripe, they’re small, red, and not too distinctive looking. But when they’re still ripening, one of the species here has spotted berries (maianthemum racemosum, also known as Solomon’s plume), and the other species has striped berries (maianthemum stellatum, also known as starry false solomon’s seal).

Maianthemum racemosum berries. This species has larger clusters of berries (and flowers, in the spring).
Maianthemum stellatum berries

One time, while walking in the woods, I found this; these are the fully ripe berries of Solomon’s plume (possibly even a bit overripe, but at least a bit shriveled), and they do look quite cool dried up like this. I think most of the time the berries get eaten before they get to this stage, and it seems especially unusual to get to this stage with the full cluster intact like this.