Posts from the “new mexico” Category

I just ordered this thing and received it in less than one week. The doorbell rang and I looked through the glass to see yet another Blurbish box, the 157th time this has happened to be exact. I actually didn’t know what it was because I had only ordered the magazine a few days ago and didn’t think that could possibly be enough time. Apparently it is. BOOM, it’s here. I did one of these months ago, a small one, 20-pages, which I’ve been using in the field. This last trip, which was mostly wasted replacing the entire sewer line at my house, I used the magazine while working just outside of Santa Fe. The response to having the magazine was as good as you could get. In fact, it was what prompted me to do this version which is 80-pages and has more of the full story of why I’m out doing what I’m doing.

Making a publication like this, and then showing it in the field, is evidence you are not messing around. In fact, after I showed the previous version, the person I showed it to referenced the magazine later the same day and then again a few days later. I think it also had a lot to do with this person saying “You guys are okay,” and “I think you have good intentions with what you are doing,” and in that neck of the woods trust is essential to do any kind of photographic business. As for making a tool like this I don’t over think the matter. I see a need and I just go. So far this methodology has worked out pretty darn well, both commercially and now entirely and joyfully on my own.

As with many of the things I create these days, I didn’t have a lot of time to obsess about the meaning or particulars. Even with limited time the creation of this tool forced me to spend focused energy in regard to editing and sequencing. This is NEVER a bad thing even when after doing so you realize how LITTLE good work you actually have. Sob, sob. I think it has been four years and counting on this project, but a very, very light part-time at best. Doing this particular kind of work you realize the world isn’t a small place at all. You realize that even one state, in one country, on one continent would take a lifetime to really get to see and understand.

Full admission here…looking at this magazine makes me FEEL really good. It FEELS great to find a bit of clarity in the photographic clutter of life. I carry this thing in my bag and hope I can show it to others. It makes me think about what I’m doing and how the people IN the photos would respond to this. How would they feel? What does it mean to be included? What will it mean to those who have yet to see it? Having this magazine also makes me feel like there are A LOT of photographers in the world who could do amazing things with this tool. The magazine represents a very special place in the heart of generations of photographers. We all know the current state of the editorial world, so when you think about doing a magazine on your own, and running work the way it was intended to be seen, you realize just how powerful a tool like this can be. If I was a better designer I would love to create a collaborative, quarterly publication showcasing good photography with enough real estate to allow the work to shine.

Categories: blurb, magazine, new mexico

Tagged: blurb, daniel milnor, field guide, magazine, new mexicio, smogranch, una pura verdad

Homecoming

Smogranch

Posted on March 20, 2013

“You know this story of yours might be a homecoming.”

This idea was presenting to me by a friend and fellow photographer after we overlapped on our current projects. My current project IS a homecoming, and each and every time I bring my camera to eye I can sense and sometimes feel the influence of my father. He’s out there somewhere. Sometimes he plays tricks on me. (The hummingbird thing..I know that was you padre.)

The short of it is I miss the old man. Dad was the reason we first went to Wyoming all those years ago. The cross country drive with siblings and a car sick dog. The silence, the wind, the smell of sage after a rain. Like an infection, that place put the hooks in me and never let go, and it’s because he put me there in the first place. I set my pants on fire with a branding iron because of him. I got trampled by cows because of him. I got stepped on, scraped off, bucked off and knocked over by horses because of him. I got my fingers caught in the fence because of him. I broke beaver dams because of him. I picked up nails because of him. I learned to shoot, hunt and fish because of him.

Wyoming was true open space and once you have it in your bloodstream there is no antidote available. You have to live with the knowledge of what it’s like. The overwhelming din of absolute silence and isolation. The elements, those you need to mind or they will erase you from this place, and the landscape that reminds you that you are one step away from nowhere. I think about this place on a daily basis. I don’t fully understand it, not sure I ever will, but now I have New Mexico and this place is rapidly filling a mile wide void in my mental state. I need this place more than I want it, if that’s possible. Dust and bones, history and the knowledge that out there, around the next bend or over the next ridge line, is the unknown I’m stalking like the ghost of a bygone time.

The sound of leather soled Western boots on the dry ground. The flash of lightning and simultaneous pounding of the accompanying thunder. Hail so thick it looked like snow. Watching game move through that first crack of morning light, foreleg lifted but not yet placed, nostrils exhaling the steam of a heart driven combustion engine, all senses on high-alert. It was all too good to believe. Of course I had no pressure on me, it wasn’t my ranch. It belonged to him, and his ranch partner who is equally guilty in this crime of my exposure to the West.

Juan wasn’t my father but it sure felt like he was, and this was a good thing. Juan wasn’t from the West, he was Cuban, but as they say he got west as fast as he could. The real deal cowboy. Not the rodeo type or the owner of a 4×4 with a lift kit, he was right off the pages of what you think you know about the West. I saw him do a lot of things you probably wouldn’t believe, so I’m not going to waste your time with trying to explain them to you now. He had a touch of the wild in him, probably still does. I hid his cigarettes and he ran me down and made me give them up. He made me do everything I was afraid to do. He taught me an extreme range of words I wasn’t supposed to repeat. He bought me a hamburger after I started crying when I slammed my head into the passenger side window on the way home from a trip to Ft. Collins to pick up tractor parts. He rescued my fingers from the fence. He left me in the middle of nowhere with a notepad and my first “assignment” to track the cows being bred by the lucky bull in front of me. It was perfect.

There was also another guilty party. Yep, mom was there too. She taught me a lot including what a Pentax K1000 and Haliburton case looked like. That case went everywhere we went, just like the bag I carry today. From truck to truck it would be stuck behind the bench seat as we roamed the pastures or mountainsides coming out from time to time to make these pictures you see here. Back then what she did was considered not extreme but dedicated. Like a slow trickle from an irrigation pipe, it might not seem like a lot but when all is said and done a photographic archive exists and the thirst of a field is satisfied.

I’m not sure where I go from here. I really don’t know. All I know is I can’t run from the demon forever. At some point the haunting of the West will come calling and I will need to go and pay whatever respect is required. It might be nothing. It might be everything. Until that time I’ll continue to drift. And when I’m out there amid whatever it is that brushes against me, I’ll know that the old man is there too, right where he should be.

Dedicated to BOJ

Thanks for putting me there.

Categories: 35mm, analog, color, dad, dads, Documentary, mom, new mexico, wyoming

Tagged: dad, daniel milnor, Documentary, homecoming, new mexico, smogranch, wyoming

White Sands “Magazine”

Smogranch

Posted on February 19, 2013

Guilty.

I’ve done it again. I’ve spawned another publication. This particular item from a brief encounter with White Sands National Monument, which is one tiny piece of my New Mexico opus. I can’t really call this a magazine, but I can call it a magazine format, which it is.

There was some confusion about this, but what I do is open InDesign and under the file menu you will see “Book Creator.” This allows you to punch in relevant information about specifics and then the plugin generates your files automatically, complete with bleed and trim lines. In short, if it works for me then it HAS to work for you. My design skills are puny, something I acknowledge up front to set the appropriate expectation levels.

Am I selling this little beast? No. Am I professing it’s beauty? Only it’s size, shape and material. Am I claiming it makes a profound statement? No. Am I claiming it forced me to edit my day’s take? Yes. Did creating this force me to think critically and make decisions? Yes. Am I going to make more? What do you think?

Over the past two weeks I’ve created at least three magazines, several books, a few letters and an assortment of handmade objects, both from the road and from here at home. It’s been a strangely productive time, but the pull of the unknown is creeping into my subconscious once again, which can only mean one thing. I must make more images. The monkey on my back is undeniable, insatiable and can’t be reasoned with.

Categories: 35mm, analog, black and white, magazine, new mexico

Tagged: blurb, daniel milnor, magazine, new mexico, smogranch, soutwest, the new mexico project, travel, una pura verdad, white sands

Print em Danno

Smogranch

Posted on February 11, 2013

You HAVE to make prints.

Personally, I feel so strongly about this that I believe you aren’t actually a photographer if you aren’t printing your work. And when I say “Print” it doesn’t have to mean darkroom print. It can be any print. Photographic, inkjet, darkroom, wet, dry, moist, whatever. Just do it. I see a lot of work today, and I see a lot of portfolios and I see I lot of folks presenting on things like iPads, and I frankly do not see the kind of consideration I’m looking for. This doesn’t mean I haven’t seen solid digital presentations, I have, but they are few and far between.

I hear comments like “Well, I just left this in because ___________________.(Insert casual reason here.)” No, no, no, no, no. That is not how it’s done. I see galleries with HUNDREDS of images, which is the quickest way to alert the person reviewing your work that you are not ready for a review. I think making prints helps with this. In short, printing makes you think and forces you to make decisions. THAT my friends is a good thing.

Categories: 35mm, analog, black and white, color, documenatary, new mexico, prints, white sands

Tagged: critical thought, daniel milnor, decisions, Documentary, new mexico, prints, smogranch, white sands

Note from Mom

Smogranch

Posted on February 9, 2013

I recently visited White Sands National Monument in Southern New Mexico, and upon return I sent a few images to my mother. She sent this note in reply.

“When we went hunting with my Uncle Lester on the Havasupi Indian Reservation North of the rim of the Grand Canyon we would sit by the campfire every evening and he would read stories to us about the desert. We would have eaten potatoes and fresh deer meat with onions. The wind would make that low whistle you can only hear at a place like this as it dances around the sage brush. Perhaps those ghosts are dancing there. We would be up before daylight back to the business of hunting. I got lost once with just a MilkyWay candy bar. I finally climbed a high hill and took a look around. Made my decision and traveled on. I finally ran into the cross fence I was told I would run into if I went that-a-way. It was just about dark when I got back to camp. I was glad. These are times that build wonderful memories that last all your life.
The desert is a magical place that plays all kinds of tricks on you. What you know well other places doesn’t apply to the desert. It shows you another dimension. You need time for the desert. You have to let it find you.”
Like the pictures.

Categories: 35mm, new mexico, white sands

Tagged: 28mm, 50mm, daniel milnor, Documentary, monument, national, smogranch, southwest, travel, una pura verdad, white sands