Morning Photo Tour - Countryside

Wednesday morning at 
8 a.m., Geraint Smith picked me up for my A.M. Photo Tour.  You can read all about this incredibly talented nature photo- grapher on his website.  Here's a link to the photo tours page:

http://www.geraintsmith.com/phototours.html

The morning flew by quickly as Mr. Smith took me on the High Road to Santa Fe (or the High Road to Taos, if you're headed the other way).  I was just thankful someone else was driving for a change, someone who knew their way around --- so I could sit back and enjoy the scenery.

Geraint knows the Taos area like the back of his hand.  And I'd sent him a few samples of the type of photography and painting I like to do, so he has this intuitive sense of what the people on his tours would like to see and take pictures of.

He was also a very patient teacher, showing me professional tips in a way that certainly didn't feel teacherly. Something as simple as, "I leave my lens cap off, so I'll be ready to shoot," helped me be mindful of what a waste of time putting it on and taking it off all the time (out of habit) was. 

Another good tip, that a lot of people don't think of, is to have something of interest in the foreground, or at least add some foreground and cut out a lot of that sky, unless of course, it's sky you want.

I was just thrilled with our morning photo shoot. It was actually quite relaxing, just knowing I was in the company of someone who knew his way around.  All I had to do was jump in and out of the car at regular intervals to take pictures of everything that caught my eye.

Our tour that morning included visits to old mission churches of the mountains. I'll show some of those pictures tomorrow.

Sometimes details are what I'm after.

Rusty barbed wire, knotty old boards...

...an antique license plate, from 

the Land of Enchantment: New Mexico.

Once in a while I get a good enough shot, that might make a perfect painting on its own.  

But usually I take parts of one shot and add them to a painting of something else.  I can scale down or up the size of items, move them around, leave them out.  I love photography and have tried to develop a feeling for good composition, but sometimes the lighting is all wrong, or something gets in the way, to ruin a good shot.  No fear, a good painting just might happen anyway.