Yesterday was my kind of day, which means it was low-key and full to the brim of art-nerdiness.  We started the day with a trip to Satellite Coffee to try out the recommendation of an old high school friend (thanks Matylda!).  I had the Mexican Latte and it was just as tasty as promised.  I’ve already had a second one, if I’m being honest.  Then it was onto the Albuquerque Museum of Art.  We’d noticed in our first day of exploration that there was an Impressionist Exhibit currently on display and couldn’t resist.  Surprisingly though, that wasn’t the real draw of the museum, at least for me.  After we’d looked about in the main exhibit we perused the rest of the museum and found a really solid collection of contemporary art and a truly inspiring exhibit of high school photography.  And I only know it was high school work because of the information that accompanied the exhibit.  The images were, well, freaking incredible for lack of a better description.  Both traditional and digital photography was represented and I was floored by the quality, creativity, and quantity of the work present.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around Old Town Albuquerque, which besides the inevitable tourist-trap stores, has a fair number of galleries and interesting little shops.  We found a cafe with some shade to eat lunch in, picked up a few pieces of art, and had some nice chats with gallery-owners.  Plus, plenty of opportunities to shoot presented themselves, and I’m proud to say I took each one.  Previous to rebooting Photodork with the “Photo of the Day” project, I almost never took pictures on vacation.  I’d always get real excited about all the time I was going to have to photograph on the trip and then cop-out when we arrived on the scene.  My excuse was perpetually that photography is what I do for a living and I deserved the break.  Such a difference lies in the photos I take when I’m hired (generally wedding photos and senior portraits) and the work I think of as my own.  Thinking back on in now, it was a lazy excuse and one that I am glad to have eschewed in recent weeks.