Photographic Experiences

Photographic Experiences

by William Lulow

Recently returned from a trip out west to Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming, I began thinking about how we experience places we visit. Sometimes, we are simply tourists passing through various locales because we love to travel. Other times, our travel is purposeful – we are after something. We are looking for something. On this trip, I was interested in seeing how scenes that I had captured in the past had changed or even how similar they were. You can do these things without making any new images or you can experience how your heightened sensitivities and knowledge change how you view old, familiar places. In my case, I was literally amazed at how much more I knew, both about photographic technique as well as what I knew about these places I had visited in the past. For one thing, when I last did some serious photography in Colorado, I was really just embarking on my professional career and was learning as I went along. I hadn’t really studied any lighting, but I certainly knew about things like filters, depth-of-field and what various lenses could do. In the early 1970s we shot film and lots of it. This time, everything was digital. I still like to use filters for landscapes and different lenses like I have always done, but the experience was better this time around. My image making was a bit more intense and studied because I knew more about what I was doing. Here are a couple of “then-and-now” images:

The first one was made back in 1972 and the second, last month (2022). In many ways, I actually like the winter one better because it just seems more artful. This one room schoolhouse was built in 1909 in Nathrop, Colorado. When I first photographed it, I wasn’t aware of its significance or of any of its history. I was just intrigued by the composition with the mountain behind it and the contrast between the blacks & whites. Back then, I actually did make a color image, but I much preferred this one. On my return visit, I was interested more in documenting the place rather than making an “artsy” photograph. As a matter of fact, we were met with mostly cloudy and rainy weather which made pictures with lots of white, puffy clouds impossible. In the 52 intervening years, weather and possibly vandals have taken an even greater toll on the building.

When we got to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and Grand Teton National Park, I had been there before both in the summer and winter, but I had a new outlook on photographing the Tetons. This time, I wasn’t just passing through. I was going to spend a few days there, so I had an opportunity to revisit a couple of locations that I only photographed once previously.

The first image here was made in 1970, the second this month (August, 2022). It is obvious that these mountains will not change in the lifetime of one human, nor probably in several lifetimes, but again, my photographic techniques are so much better now, that the results are very different. One of the reasons for this was that I set out purposely to photograph the same places I did before.

Another example of a “then & now” image:

The first time I photographed this church, built in 1874, it just seemed quaint and there was no one around, so it became kind of a motif of a small, Colorado town’s religious gathering place. Fifty years later, it was being used as a school in addition, so there were kids present, the door was open, there was a canopy pitched in front and a big, green “go slow” sign in front. But, the structure was exactly the same and I was able to photograph it from the same approximate angle I did all those years ago. I was glad to see it was still there and being used on a daily basis. The light conditions were not anywhere near as dramatic, but I wasn’t shooting it for the drama this time. The place was the same, but the experience was quite different.

So, I have spoken many times about photography experiences. If you are just passing through a place, you really don’t have the time to see it from different angles or in different light conditions. You basically take what you get on any given day. If you are able to spend some time at the same place, you can often come up with very different “looks” and see it under many different circumstances.  Here’s a little experiment I did a while back, photographing the same subject in all four seasons of the year:

Photographers have done this before, but it’s always interesting to get different perspectives of the same subject at different times of day, different lightings and times of the year. The trick is to be able to return to the same place over and over.

This was my first view of the Grand Tetons:

This was a pretty nice day, but there were too many clouds and they actually obscured the tops of the mountains. I was able to return the next day, when the skies were perfectly clear to get this view:

This was a spectacular day with no clouds. I kind of wanted to add some to the view, but decided against it because the mountain took up most of the upper composition.

For photographic experiences, it’s always better if you can see a place more than just once.