You know the drill: don’t try this at home! (I’ll leave it to you to figure out just what that is.) This FotoFeed image shows where I was.
What we have here is a cool video I just created of footage shot while descending from the west side of the Rio Grande gorge to the Taos Junction Bridge. That’s NM 567, if I’m not mistaken, a rocky dirt road in fairly horrible condition that plunges hundreds of feet down to the river, mostly without guard rails. I did some creative editing and added my own sound track which some of you will recognize.
This one really does need to be viewed full-screen if you can manage it. The video is 1080 x 720 HD and plenty loud once it gets rolling. At first I regretted the rare cloudy day, but then realized the gloom produced the perfect atmosphere. At one point there’s a yelp that sounds like a dog in the cab of my ’87 Ford F-150, except that I don’t have a dog, so it might have been me. (?)
I had reason to, uh, yelp…
John Hamilton Farr lives in Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. with his classical pianist wife. “Possibly the only place I can get away with this,” he says. As New York Times best-selling author James C. Moore (
Freakin’ cool!
Ya think? Good thing I was alone on the road!
A+ . Wild and Worthwhile. Just don’t make this descent at night with no headlights!.
It’s a crazy road, Byron. And one of the few ways to get out of that canyon. Glad you liked it! Rough road, horrendous crashing and banging. Quite a place…
Neat little adventure there John. I guess a guy has to go out and get his blood a-pumpin’ somehow. Thank for letting me know about the post.
(Hi Beth)
That’s right, a guy does. 🙂
I just got car sick sitting at my desk.
Beautiful scenery, though!
It was much more nausea-inducing at the regular speed, believe me. Speeding it up helped a lot! And did anyone notice that there are SIX different speeds among the clips?
It occurs to me that you must have been driving one-handed. 🙂
Some day I might invent a little gadget to hold the camera (a by now quite obsolete Kodak Zi6), but I’m sure I got a smoother image by holding the camera in my right hand.
There was no one else on the road, obviously, or I might have done things differently!
maybe you need to find some kind of small Steadicam-type mount (if there is such a thing)? or as you said build you own: it’s basically just springs and counterbalanced weights, but you have to engineer it right.
Another great video: thanks, John.
Glad you liked it, Richard! I had a great time making it.
Nice John! And I thought I had enough vertigo just standing on the bridge way above the gorge, trying to get some interesting pics with the semis blasting past a couple of feet away and the whole bridge bouncing as as they passed. Too much vibration to use a tripod – handholding was more stable!