In every issue we intend to include a photographer's account of making an image. We will ask him or her why he/she made the choices he/she did—what alternatives were considered, and what constrained the range of choices. We'd like to include one or two other shots of the same scene, and learn why the featured image was preferred.

Taos Pueblo in New Mexico ought to be a must-see destination for anyone in the Four Corners area; indeed, busloads of tourists tramp through the dusty plazas every day. The pueblo probably dates back to the sixteenth century, or sometime after the people had left the region north and west of here. The indians here, and in several other pueblos north and west of Albuquerque are certainly the descendents of the Anasazi who built the wonderful cliff-dwellings and stone structures of Mesa Verde, Chaco, and other thousand-year old ruins in the Four Corners region. The Spanish chapel here is a later addition to the native puebloan culture, apparently tolerated if not fully embraced by the natives. At least that was the story I was told at Acoma pueblo, which is another fascinating old, old native American village.

The mission is an irresistible subject, of course as the whitewashed gate and façade stand in sharp contrast to the dark earth tone of the remainder of the building. We know what we're going to point our cameras at; the question then is simply where to stand? One answer is right in front of the church, and that image is on the upper right. It doesn't work at all, which is largely because a significant portion of the building is blocked from our sight. I moved to the right a few paces, lined up the white object in the courtyard in the center of the gate and made sure the cross atop the gate did not overlap with the tower and made the shot on the lower right. For the image below I moved in several paces closer to the wall as well as to the left so I could see almost all of the front of the chapel. For all three shots I used a dark yellow filter, which is what I use almost all the time I am working outdoors. I am not happy that the tonal values of the adobe and the sky are essentially identical, but I don't like dark skies and I do like some definition in the clouds.



You can see by the shadows that the light was right overhead—the worst time of day for picture-taking. I had arrived early in the morning, but the sky was then overcast and the absence of shadows just didn't work for me here. By mid-morning the sun was out and I made a second and a third tour around the plaza, exposing four or five rolls of films (TMax 100, which is my preferred film because of the small grain). I had other places I wanted to visit and could not spend the entire day at the pueblo or would have returned to the chapel several more times.
                                                                                                          —FLG

No. 1 April 2006

The decision as to what to point my camera at was easy, but where to stand? Fortunately an open plaza in front of the church, and no cars parked at a curb made for a lot of alternatives. And I had lots of film so I did not have to make a choice. I began, as I usually do when photographing an architectural subject right in front, on the central axis of the building. Sometimes that works well, sometimes it doesn't. Here it didn't. The building is obscured and there is no compensating benefit. Although the camera was level, it is clear from this perspective that the white area of the gate "leans" a bit to the right, and that bothers me; I can correct it in Photoshop, of course, but then the ground will not be level and that would probably bother me more. I would have liked a stepladder at that moment so I could get the entire cross atop the gate placed against the dark background of the church, but that would have been only a marginal improvement.

The stepped walls of the gate are as important as the big whitewashed area and I wanted to make sure they were not "broken up" by anything in the background, so that was the major determining factor in where I stood. There is a clear delineation on the left and a pretty good one on the right. I also wanted to include as much of the front of the chapel itself as possible, but that was a secondary consideration.