Miner's Camp, Telluride

Miner's Camp, Telluride

Awhile back I posted the iPhone version of this image. Actually misplaced the card that had my higher res images and found it today - right in the camera where I left it..

New Mexico, Rancho Taos

Racho Taos, New Mexico

Found this one in my shoebox of o0ld film images yesterday. When I attempted printing this on paper years back I was simply not able to make it work. With a little help from the digital world I was finally able to finally create my vision of this often photographed church.

Ghost Ranch - Abiqu, New Mexico

Ghost Ranch, Abiqu, New Mexico

“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.”...Old Cree Indian Proverb

Rancho Taos 2

Rancho Taos, New Mexico

 'Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees'.........Paul Strand

Rancho De Taos

Rancho Taos Mission

My take on the often photographed 'San Francisco de Asis' Mission Church in Rancho Taos, New Mexico. 

My first knowledge of this Mission was a Georgia O'Keefe painting and two photographic images, one by Ansel Adams and the other by Paul Strand. I remember thinking, at first glance,  what an elegant almost 'great pyramid' type structure. Immediately this was on the bucket list.

I stood at this mission for the first time in May of 2009 and wanted to capture an image from a different angle then I previously saw in O'Keefe, Strand and Adams.

This image has been processed several times since capture. The goal was to isolate the Mission from the surrounding structures and this oddly cropped version is what finally worked for me.

Los Angeles

Ghost Ranch, Abiqu

Still in Los Angeles and not shooting much the past few weeks. This is one of those periods where I spend a good deal of time trying to learn technology new to me by re-processing older images - mostly with NIK Color EFX pro and Viveza 2.

Weeping Rock, Zion National Park

The two images today fall into that category - Weeping Rock is from last year in Zion and Abiqu was from a workshop in New Mexico.

Juxtaposition

'No matter how slow the film, spirit always stands still for the photographer it has chosen'.

Minor White

This Minor White quote has always been one of my favorites.

The quote popped into my mind when I was scanning through images in Lightroom today. I was  thinking about deeper issues like  'what motivates me as a photographer' and started thinking about Minor White. Lately I have been working with my iphone using applications to to create images that are more 'expressionist' the 'realistic'. Then I started to wonder if I am losing touch by not spending more time working on the more realistic straightforward images.  Do I need the HDR or the IPhone to get excited about a capture?

I was also giving some thought to my visit to Death Valley while working on the photo below.  I kept thinking the photo was missing something as this image is a complete departure from other images that I have been working on over the past few weeks. I then took another look at the Las Vegas, New Mexico image above, which was one of the first HDR captures I made in 2008.

I must admit I'm drawn towards the HDR - not necessarily the more 'grunge' HDR - but I do love the painterly quality of the image that you can achieve using this process. So, in the end, the debate still exists about whether it is a photograph or an illustration. And then , again, does it really matter.

PS: Two images today - did not post yesterday.