Shopping for Color in Old Town Albuquerque

Central Ave. in Downtown Albuquerque

I am in Albuquerque, New Mexico for the North American Nature Photographers Association Summit a day early, it turns out, so I spent my first afternoon shopping for a New Mexico speciality: color! It is part of the culture. It is everywhere. New Mexicans, Albuquerquians, are not ashamed of color. 

The hotel is downtown next to the ultra modern Convention Center, but just around the corner from Historic Route 66, Central Avenue, and only about 2 miles from the color headwaters, the original color spring, in Old Town. So, of course, I walked down Historic 66 to Old Town. Honestly once you get past the Convention Center section of 66, which is colorfully seedy, it is not a great part of town until you get to Old Town. 

Still, if you have to have grated storefronts…

Locked Down Color

Of course the color really gets interesting once you reach Old Town. This is Old New Mexico at its most intense.

Turquoise!

The late afternoon light made the color pop, but also cast heavy shadows that I had to deal with. 

Out of the sun, the shadows were cool, and light levels were surprisingly low. I found myself using higher ISOs than I might have preferred.

Hot and Cold

Hot!

In a gated passageway into a hidden plaza the shadows were even deeper, and the colors cooler. Such a mass of chillies!

Red and Green

Warming Bench

The hanging peppers for color is a tradition in New Mexico, but I had never seen this effect before.

Pepper Color

And, of course, to offset the riot of color at street level, you have the adobe and stark white of the church spires, which show to particular effect against the deep New Mexico sky.

Spires and New Mexico Sky

Sunlit Detail

Even the smallest nooks are filled with color. Here, deep in a shadowed passageway into a plaza, the afternoon sun finds it way in to light up a little detail outside a shop.

Pushing further into the plaza I found an interesting bucket fountain standing against the intense blue of the window frames behind. I tried a couple of shots here, trying for a balance between the frame of the fountain and the color of the background. This shot, taken at medium telephoto worked best for me. 

With a wider shot it was difficult to get both the bucket and the background in focus at the same time.

Water Color

On the way back to the hotel, I found one last blast of color on a very non-Hispanic building…just to demonstrate that color is in the blood in New Mexico.

In the Blood

All in all a succesfull color shopping trip. But then, it is New Mexico. How could I miss?