Who I am and what 'one Picture one Story' is all about

   I am James Cleveland Watley. I have been playing with cameras off and on since I was 9 years old in 1960. My father gave me a camera and limited instruction and turned me loose. We lived in a tiny town on Route 66 in the Texas panhandle. My father was the only doctor for 30 miles in any direction and he turned a small old grocery store into a clinic. This included a tiny closet for immersion processing of x-rays. He also had reel tanks for 35mm and medium format. Developing trays and an enlarger could be set up in the exam room where there was a sink.

   Me and a few friends would roam our little town with our cameras. My favorite subject as a young boy was the drag races in Amarillo. At only twelve or thirteen years old I could get a pit pass and wander around and watch the cars being prepped for a run. This also meant I could be so close to the cars blasting off the starting line I would get rubber dust on the lens from the smoking tires. These photos and negatives were all destroyed in a house fire when I was 17. With no evidence to the contrary I will claim they were nearly all masterworks of a budding genius.

   In 1994 after living in Santa Fe for a few years I became friends with an artist who was a photographer, and a painter working in airbrushed acrylics.

Hanging out with him and taking photos and talking about them was stimulating and informative. His kind and positive assessment of my photos was a real confidence booster. He also introduced me to Photoshop and gave me my first bootleg copy of the program. Those of you with a discerning eye may have picked up that the self-portrait above has been ever so slightly modified in Photoshop.

   This led to a more dedicated and studious approach to photography. At

the time there was a great used camera store here and I bought a Canon T90, the last and most advanced of the Canon FD line. I already had a few lenses as I was using a Canon AE-1 at the time. The T90 was 10 years old when I bought it and at 38 years old it is still going strong.

   I took lots of landscapes and clouds and cabinetwork and friends and floral macros. Then I found my love…live performance. Santa Fe has free outdoor performances 4 to 5 times a week all summer and I am there as often as possible. The first 6 years was all on film, taken with the T90 and a few lenses I swapped out on the fly.

   I went through a few Canon dslrs, a 50D and a 7D MKII, before settling on my current setup which is a pair of Canon 5D MKIVs. I usually have a 24-105 f4 on one, and depending on venue, a 100-400 f4.5-5.6 or a 135 f1.8 on the other. The Sigma 135 Art is a fantastic lens for isolating a single performer or you can zoom with your feet and get a great portrait style image. Sometimes I will substitute my Canon 1V HS or 1N HS for one of the MKIVs and use black and white film.

   Then spring of 2020 happened. New Mexico shut down in the second week of March a few days before I was scheduled to photograph a local Irish dance school's annual St. Patrick's Day performance.

   What I thought would be a break of a few months dragged on and on, and with no end in sight, I chose to retire from 30+ years of building furniture and cabinets and museum displays, a year earlier than planned, at the end of 2020.

   At this point I was unable to photograph live performances so I took the opportunity to develop my landscape skills. I put some work into my old four wheel drive and started exploring miles and miles of dirt and gravel roads and two tracks on BLM (Bureau of Land Management), and National Forest Land.

   Not until 2023 was I able to return to photographing live music and the other outdoor events that happen so often in Santa Fe: the Ren Faire, Spanish Market, Indian Market, 4th of July, International Folk Art Market, Pride Day, Fiesta, Indigenous People's Day, Indigenous Ways Festival, Las Posadas, the Canyon Road Christmas Eve Walk and more and more.

I could stay within the boundaries of my state and never run out of new subjects to photograph, and to find new ways to see the places I return to time and again.

   In 'one Picture one Story' I will share one photo at a time and ramble on about it. My story for each image may include what I experienced when taking the photo and/or what I experience now in viewing and thinking about it. Unless there is something particularly technical about how the photo was captured, I won't write about technical details. You are welcome to ask for these details in the comments.

   Unless noted at the beginning of a post, every photograph will have been taken by me. I may occasionally share historical family photos because I find them intriguing both personally and photographically.

   I hope everyone who stumbles onto my musings finds something of interest in my photos and words.

                                                       Jim Watley

                            "I'm always looking, and sometimes I see"

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