Images From The Road – Taos, New Mexico

Images From The Road – Taos, New Mexico

by William Lulow

Here are some images from a side trip up to Taos, from Santa Fe. Throughout this entire trip so far, I have felt a bit like great landscape photographers who have preceded me, Adams, Porter, Weston etc., and there were many others of course, who really took the time to search for inspirational scenes and then worked on them to make them really stand out. Most of the images below were made with locations selected carefully, camera placed on a tripod and exposures adjusted sometimes using ISO settings. I should note here that I often mention what is referred to as the “triangle of exposure” when I am teaching my students how to get it right, and I have been able to make really sharp images that stand up to enlargements sometimes as big as 30″x40″ even with ISO settings of around ISO1000; something I often was able to achieve with a frame of 35mm Tri-X film! So my technique would often involve the tripod so that I could slow down my shutter speeds, increase my ISO setting and DECREASE my aperture to about f/16 or so to get a really sharp image with great depth-of-field. In addition, I have been shooting original Black&White with a red (#25A) filter. This cuts down on the exposure by about three f/stops, so not only is the tripod helpful, it is necessary.  The ability to manipulate all three camera settings results in total control of what the camera can do. After all, that’s the goal.

Each one of these images was made with the above technique. My goal is to make images that will be able to be enlarged and that make some kind of definitive statement about what is in front of my lens. All have been subjected to my post-production techniques which I can do on the road with my laptop, but not nearly as well as I can do at the studio.

The use of our camera phones has sometimes been taking the place of regular, traditional cameras because they are easier to carry, don’t take up as much room, are always in our pockets and, with the latest iterations, have become pretty good at rendering great images. This ease of use has some drawbacks, however. One of the main ones is that in order to see the viewfinder, you have to hold the camera/phone at arm’s length. When you are using it on its telephoto setting, it can become difficult to hold it steady enough. I saw I person using his iphone on a tripod when I was in Denver recently. I told him that he “was doing it right.” As I have mentioned many times, tripods help slow the process down a bit because you have to think about where to set it up, what to include in your composition, how to evaluate the exposure, etc., – all the things you should be doing with any camera! So, those images will tend to be quite a bit better than the average “grab” shots.

As I have said before, there is no substitute for a good tripod:

Here I am with this great, little travel tripod which extends up to about five feet or so and collapses to a very packable 15″. I actually put it in my checked bag and keep it in the car with me when we tour around. It has a bag with a strap that I could carry easily if I needed it while walking anywhere. If I’m just looking around at things I might find photograph-worthy, I usually won’t carry it, but I might go back and get it if I see something interesting.