Arnie y Melissa

When we crossed from Colorado into New Mexico something changed. We went from seeing an occasional descanso to seeing them every few miles to, in some areas, seeing them every few hundred yards.

For a photographer working on these memorials it was a little overwhelming.

The first several I saw on highway 522 didn’t lend themselves to stopping and shooting — the road was too narrow and there wasn’t enough of a shoulder to safely park on. But when we rolled through Questa, New Mexico and came to a “Y” in the road I had to stop.

Arnie and Melissa were memorialized on the side of the road in front of a Carquest auto parts store, their respective descansos almost competing for attention on this small hill. I’ve given up looking for information about these deaths online, at least in New Mexico and Colorado, and am just focusing on sharing the photos.

I like the new settings I am trying; they are warm and despite vignette being bad, I like the vignette as a focusing mechanism.

Descanse en paz, Arnie y Melissa.