Sunset Drive

As I made my way home this evening, I stopped by more of the places I had photographed 30 years ago, and photographed the sunset as it developed from various points of view along the way to create the series of photos for today. My first stop resulted in the last panorama of Albuquerque with the Rio Grande in the foreground and the Sandias looking ever so small on the horizon. 

I was attempting to get to a spot where I had photographed a lift station and the high power lines coming into the city from the west mesa as part of my suburban landscapes in 1981. The access road to the lift station is now part of a gated community that locks out everyone but the residents, and, I assume, city waste water staff. I drove south by more gates and cul-de-sacs with houses crowded around the top of the arc. I finally found a cul-de-sac with access to the escarpment above the river, just north of the I-40 bridge. I started to walk north along a trail that hugged the very edge of the cliff a few hundred feet about the bosque to see if I could get near the point I had been 30 years ago. The trail was interrupted by a fence the round down the steep slope and ended where the escarpment turns into a sheer drop. I walked back to the empty lot and stoop on the edge of the cliff and took the series of photos I made into the panorama.

From the escarpment overlooking the river, the other places were much easier to find, but the same vantage point I had taken the photos from were not always available because of development. I did my best to get photos from the same points-of-view, and photographed anything else that looked interesting — the sunset included.