Santa Fe is a community of artists. Indeed, it is considered an artistic mecca second only (in the US) to New York City.
Georgia O’Keeffe moved there from New York City (it is unknown whether she brought any picante sauce with her) in 1934, where she lived the remainder of her life on a property called the Ghost Ranch an hour north of town.
San Francisco was a man. You think of it as a town, but the city was named after the man. He was a Roman Catholic saint that English speakers know as St. Francis of Assisi.
There was a church built in his name near Taos, New Mexico in the late 1700s (finished in the early 1800s) of which Georgia O’Keeffe painted a number of pictures. Ansel Adams, every photographer’s muse, also photographed it.
Taos is about an hour and a half north of Santa Fe. The famous church is not in Taos; it’s about four miles south of that pueblo in a community known as Ranchos de Taos.
I had endeavored to photograph that church. And I determined ahead of time that I wanted to do it in Ansel’s style.
But I didn’t want to copy him. I deliberately avoided seeing any of his photos of the building, so that whatever I did would be MY work and not subconsciously copying the Great Master.
I arrived at the site. It’s next to a busy highway, with urban decay right next door. There are light poles and power lines everywhere.
Sigh. How to shoot this, how to capture the essence of the place while leaving the power lines out of it…
Like all New Mexico architecture, the church is in a courtyard with low walls. Here’s a shot through the gate:
But it wasn’t the shot I wanted. For one thing, the cross in the courtyard is directly in front of the door. I walked around in the courtyard, looking at shooting angles, such as this one of St. Francis outside:
I also went inside the church, where a sign said, “no photography.” Someone was at the altar, praying. I very quietly stood, absorbing the atmosphere of that beautiful interior, respecting the wishes of the Diocese: I have no shots of the interior. I left even more quietly.
Back outside, I circled the entire building. More than once, if I remember correctly. There were a few things I wanted in the frame, one of which is the statue of St. Francis outside in the garden. I also wanted the various crosses to stand out.
I knew that I’d be working in monochrome: you just don’t photograph something like that in color. I took 40 exposures, trying to visualize how each of them would look in black & white.
Here is the shot that I chose for my final image from the shoot.
This photo is a little larger than most. If you want to see a larger view of it, click on it.
In my digital darkroom, I darkened the blues to make the sky almost black, to make the crosses pop. I darkened the greens to make the trees unobtrusive, and to make the statue pop. I brightened the yellows to make the adobe be the shade of gray that I wanted.
In the end, I’m very pleased. I consider this shot my magnum opus of my monochrome corpus. And after finishing it, I finally looked at what Ansel Adams did with this building.
He photographed the back of the building. I didn’t copy him at all.
Paid subscribers received a full-size, full-resolution copy of this image, suitable for printing and framing, a week or so ago. If you’re not a paid subscriber, you can buy a framed fine-art print of this image here:
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/adobe-church-new-mexico-ken-barber.html
You can spend anywhere from a dozen dollars to hundreds of dollars there, depending on what you want. They get most of that money: printing and framing are expensive.
I would be in New Mexico another six months.
Beautiful photos. I've yet to make it to New Mexico!
I love that area. Your photos are stunning.