This is an overview shot of the Pueblo cliff dwellings at Bandelier Monument. You can hike up along the cliff edge and some of the dwellings have ladders that you can climb and see up close.

One more of the Aspensin Santa Fe. Again, this is a high-dynamic range image. I had to reduce saturation during processing.

Another shot of the atrium of the La Fonda Hotel.

One more from my recent New Mexico visit. This is from a side street of Taos. As you can see, it was a gray, rainy day.

One more street scene from out visit to Santa Fe[‘s Art nite.

Sena Plaza is a small plaza in Santa Fe that is just off the main plaza. It is lushly planted and very charming. We did not get to explore much but hopefully next visit.

The La Fonda hotel sits at one corner of the Plaza in Santa Fe. My guidebook says that the hotel is a meeting place for locals and tourists. Actually, it is the only place around the Plaza that has a public bathroom. The hotel has a beautiful lobby with many shops as well as a lovely restaurant in its central atrium. Mother and I stopped for lunch and then walked up to the balcony of the atrium. Here is a shot of the restaurant area.

These sunflowers were blooming everywhere in Santa Fe and Taos. We saw them growing in vacant lots, along the highways and railroad tracks. I converted this image to black and white using the Nik Old Photo filter. It provides a nice colorizing and a lot of grain.

Here is another shot from my recent visit to Santa Fe. In Santa Fe, the first Friday evening is art nite. Ma
ny of the galleries around the Plaza are open in the evening. Manitou gallery was one of the best galleries that we visited. They had several sculpture pieces and some gorgeous paintings inside.

On our second day in Santa Fe, we decided to drive up to the Aspen Vista Trail. This is located in the Sante Fe National forest. To our delight, the aspens were still glorious. The aspens appeared to glow in the sunlight. I learned that aspens are really one organism sharing a large root system. Aspens love sunlight. These aspens are the result of an 1880 forest fire that burned the pines giving sunlight to the aspens. Eventually, these aspens will be shaded out by the pines and go dormant.

Given this was taken right in the middle of a sunny day, I tried out using high-dynamic range image to try to keep the glowing yellows with detail in the pines.