Wednesday, June 25, 2008

People in Places


For an exhausting week fifteen photographers explored the world of portrait lighting on location with the estimable Alan Thornton. In a rigorous, sometimes frustrating and ultimately exhilirating workshop Alan and his able assistants Kevin and Karen turned a bunch of natural light shooters into reasonable facsimiles of professional location photographers. Our best work was perfectly lit and startlingly rendered. I am transformed.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Dreamscapes


Though I had been photographing for a very long time I had never photographed the undraped female form. When the Dreamscapes workshop became available I jumped at the chance to participate in a weekend long session shooting the nude in a northern New Mexican hacienda and on the Zia Pueblo. I departed the workshop with a grasp of natural light augmented with reflecters and diffusers and with several memorable images to remember it by.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Elegy


The lovely adobe church in Las Trampas is one of my favorite northern New Mexico subjects, rivaling famous Ranchos Church in Taos in form and expression. Called San Jose de Gracia the church was built in the early 1700s to serve the faithful along the High Road between Penasco and Chimayo. Within the church's courtyard is a tiny graveyard with ornate crosses of crude wood and wrought iron.

Chaco Canyon


An extraordinary Native American culture flourished in northwestern New Mexico before mysteriously disappearing around 1400 AD. The Chacoans mastered a complex and highly precise construction process using flat stones rather than adobe to erect massive ceremonial structures in a pastoral mecca that was central to an ancient Puebloan religion.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Sketches of Winter


Early in December just after our first real snowfall I photographed La Morada de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, a lay chapel built in the early 1800s by the Brotherhood of Penitentes. As I made my way around the little church I was taken by patterns of weeds and fences that peeked through the foot of fresh snow. Through the Winter I found similar subjects in my travels through northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. These images became the first in a series I've named Sketches of Winter.