John Fleck at the Journal has been doing some good work on the water situation along the Rio Grande. Now that the municipally owned water from the San Juan Diversion Project is actually being sucked out of the river we will see some changes. The cities certainly have the right to that water and the farmers at the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy district are now off their diet of charity water from the cities. They will complain and conveniently forget that the city slickers pay over 85% of the cost of the district even though they don't use district water and services. A day of reckoning is coming for the district if they don't get new leadership and step into reality. I had hoped for a long time that the new board members elected two years ago would bring change. They have not. My worry is that the farmers will really be left out in the cold because they couldn't agree on some sensible tax and water policies now.
2 comments:
That is one interesting photograph. I've tried taking pictures down in those cottonwoods but the way the trees grow in all different directions creates a visual confusion in the frame when I try to frame anything. But you solve that problem by just washing out a lot of the detail, which is the brown, with the white. That solves it. But there's more to that photograph. The big empty spaces, on the right, and then the narrower, deeper one on the left, are a big part of the photograph. I didn't realize that until I was in the kitchen making some toast and was looking at my computer from a distance. That distance makes it easier to see those empty spaces, whereas when you're close to the picture you just sense them. You look through them. Also, by removing the sky as a point of visual focus -- which replacing it with the blue does, and by whiting out all the little branches, all that detail -- you make the eye focus on just those parts of the tree trunks you have in focus, and that aren't whited out, on that and a little of the grass. So you're basically left with the things that outline your clearing on the right and your tunnel on the left, the boundaries of those empty spaces. And those two spaces, the two shapes, then balance the photo out, weight-wise, right to left, and, top to bottom, with a little assistance from the big tree on the left and the shadow at the bottom and a few other little things, like color. That's just a very good, very interesting photograph in my opinion.
It's visually stunning, too. Very beautiful.
I get caught up in the technical aspects, and in hearing myself talk.
Post a Comment