Back home and some thoughts on the trip!

I have arrived safely back to my home in Garland, Texas. I drove all day on Monday and made it to Van Horn, Texas. On Tuesday I drove the remaining 500 miles and made it home. Kinda reminded me of that song in the 70's that had a verse "I'm 500 miles from my home". I was the night I spent in Van Horn. I did stop and shoot a couple of things on the drive back, but I guess I should tell you about the ones I took in Fountain Hills the last day of the show.
We had to be opened at 8:00am on Sunday morning because some hot air balloons were going to take off about 7:30 from around the lake shore. I had seen about 7 or 8 take off as I arrived at the parking lot. When I got to my tent about 7:50 to open up I realized the balloons were inflating and taking off right behind my tent. That's also about the time the last one took off. While I hurried to get the walls of the tent rolled up so people could see my work, most of the people in the grassy area behind my tent walked up to the street and walked past me heading for the other 400 booths at the show. I had my camera so I spent some time photographing this last balloon which was inflated but did not take off. My booth was located about where the end of the balloons shadow was. By 9:00 there was not very many people around. So much for all the great sales that the promoters thought we would get from all of the balloon fans.

The second image is obviously a close shot of the balloons colors. Had I arrived much earlier I may have been able to get some interiors of the balloons. There wasn't any sunlight or sunrise color so I didn't feel like I missed any of that. With Sunday being the last day of the show, it meant tearing down after 5:00pm. I figured I had enough to do for one day.
Overall my three shows were a little disappointing. The snowbird population was down from previous years and that meant less attendance at the shows. That also meant less buying. I do have quite a few prospects for sales within the next couple of months. I don't ever remember having so many people interested in purchasing my larger pieces. The problem wasn't the economy or not having money. The primary residence in Minnesota, Illinois, or somewhere else up north was where they wanted the work and they weren't going back there for another 6 or 8 weeks. Nobody seemed interested in having me ship the work two months from now but they did want a business card with the size and description of the work written on the back. Hopefully some of these sales will happen in the future.

While driving through the outskirts of El Paso, I spotted the colorful Outlet Malls of El Paso. I would bet that the same architect that designed the malls designed the Library in San Antonio, the Latino Cultural Center in Dallas, and Solano out near DFW airport. Lots of color and design. I should remember the architects name...but I don't. This last image was near Pecos, Texas just off I20. There were some great skies that day. I also stumbled on a unique way to process this image. It was converted to black and white but then the blending mode was set to Luminosity. This brought the color back but with a deeper blue in the sky and more detail in the shady side of the building.
Clark