Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine caught the monkey’s eye yesterday morning while he was out and about on photo assignment.  Our class at the NatGeo Photo Expedition Workshop started out at the Santa Fe Railroad Yard with a theme to explore Santa Fe waking up.  Santa Fe is one of those places that wakes up slowly.  It seemed to be a stretch and yawn and snooze for another five minutes kind of place.

From a photography perspective Kongo realizes that the snap above is begging for a human element  The space between the two trains seems to draw you into the picture to see something…but there’s nothing there.  Just more train.  One of the lessons the monkey learned at the workshop is that scenes like this need an additional element to hold the viewers interest.  It’s an okay picture with the bright yellow engine and old-stye train cars but the image could have been much more powerful if Kongo could have conjured up an engineer carrying a tool box or something somewhere down that passage between the cars.

Kongo likes the adobe architecture style of Santa Fe.  Here shadows from the morning sun and the blue sky background typify the Santa Fe color scheme.  Many of the brown adobe buildings have turquoise blue doors and window frames.  When you see the brown adobe contrasted against the sky you get why that color is so popular in the Santa Fe buildings.

The monkey met this future X-sports star, Julian, at a skate park near the Rail Yard.  He has been practicing for a few years and gave the monkey several tips about getting airborne off a skateboard.  Kongo recalled his skateboarding days back in the mid-1960s and it was a good time watching Julian work his board.

This is another future X-sport star that Kongo watched at the park.  This little guy with the perfect logo on his shirt had just turned five years old.  He was there with his father fearlessly racing up and down the ramps like a monkey on   a mission.

Today Kongo wraps up his class and heads west back to the real world in San Diego.  He has to get home in time to pick up Mrs. Kongo and Missy at the airport Sunday evening.  Those two have been galavanting around Bermuda for the week and are cruising back to New York now.  Kongo can hardly wait to hear about Missy’s adventures.  (Missy is Kongo’s primate girlfriend)  Maybe he can talk her into posing for him!

Travel safe.  Have fun.

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