Was the trip worth it?

Lots and lots of waiting to get there

Value, like beauty and most other things, is relative to the recipient. What I think of as valuable might simply cost too much to you or require too much effort. Expenditures are a fact of life if you are going to travel anywhere and my travel to New Mexico was no cheap trip. Sure, it could have been cheaper if I lived closer and could have driven and stayed with relatives, etc. However, staying with relatives has its own requirements.

Overall, here is what it cost me to go, my travel time, and also some techy stuff to go with it so that you can see what I shot while I was there.

Costs (USD): (1/2 = half of total cost.)

• Plane ticket – American Airlines : $505
• Rental Car (1/2) – $90
• Motel – White Sands Motel: $179 including taxes and fees (4 nights)
• Early access to park 1 hour before opening for 3 days. $75 (1/2)
• Food & misc: $145
• Gasoline: $26
• Total: $1,020
• Cost/day of shooting (3.5 days): $292
• Number of shots: 1,776. Cost/shot: $0.58

Time & Distance
Distance: 1,725 miles. Charlotte, NC -> Alamogordo, NM. No direct flights from Charlotte to El Paso. Had 2+ hour layovers in Dallas, TX each way. Drive time from El Paso, TX to Alamogordo, NM 1.5 hours.

• Travel to: Left home at 9:00 AM EST, arrived at motel at 11:00 PM EST 14 hours (flight delays).
• Travel from: Left hotel at 12:30 PM EST, arrived home at 12:30 AM EST (12 hours).

Equipment:

• Nikon D2x:674 shots
• Nikon D300: 1102 shots
• 11-18 mm : 171 shots
• 50 mm: 1129 shots
• 55-200 mm : 472

Experience
Quite honestly, it was a fantastic experience. While there, Kate met one of the locals who told her about some photography off the beaten path. He told of waterfalls and slot canyons. We didn’t have time to visit them because we found out on the evening of our last full day. However, it just gives me a reason to return. Regarding the food, it was pretty cheap. For the most part, we ate light lunches and had a few meals at a local Mexican restaurant called Margo’s, which was really tasty. On the average, our meals there cost about $20 combined, including tip!

Subtle light

I have grown quite fond of my 50mm lens. As you can see, I shot most (62%) of the pictures with it. Quite frankly, it has now become my favorite lens. Sure, I had to do lots of manual zooming, BKA,(Better Known As) walking, but it was great fun.

For my next trip, I’m thinking Zion/North Rim of Grand Canyon. I’ve heard many good things about the North Rim. The great majority of the pictures that you see are taken from the south side of the canyon. The north rim is closed for most of the year due to snow. It’s open from about April until mid-late September. I’ll just have to see. I have to work around our vacation schedule, Tony’s basketball schedule, and my own work schedule. Then there’s the $$$. These trips ain’t cheap, but they are priceless!

U B U

Looking for Paul
When I got to the dunes, such a different environment, it took me a while to find me. That is, I had looked at a few pictures of the dunes on other sites and some of those images were stuck in my head. I started out with mimicry and then slowly started the transition to shooting the way that I favor shooting.

I guess that the idea was already stuck in my head from viewing those other images, which the great majority were shot horizontally and were pretty much straight shots of the dunes. Contrast this with my tendency to shoot vertically for both long and close shots and to lapse into abstract mode quite readily. It was just the opposite of the way that I normally shoot.

Lost, then found
This very reason is why I don’t view a whole lot of other landscape photography. I guess that I’m impressionable. Fortunately, I can rid myself of this mimicry in short order. It took about an hour to shake it loose and then start seeing the way that I normally see and portray. Most landscape photography that I have seen does not incorporate people into the landscape. Well, IMHO, we are there, like it or not, and I love to include ‘us’. I think that it makes the shot so much more interesting by adding known scale. Also, I am a HUGE fan of big skies. Clouds, skies, and height fascinate me so it seems natural to shoot vertically.

Another love of mine is subtle light, which I am trying to master. Subtle light, in my opinion, is easy to capture, but sometimes difficult to portray in print or on the screen. There is no one right way to take a picture and we are all driven by our internal motivations, experiences, and personal tastes. There are those who will tell us ‘the right way’ to do things, but in the end, you have to go with your gut, or intuition. I am not opposed to new ideas about approaching a subject: High, low, left, right, abstract, literal, spending more time, thinking a bit more, etc. I’ve garnered many good ideas from the comments received in this blog. However, I don’t get swayed very easily when someone says that they would do it a different way. This doesn’t make my way wrong and I feel no compunction to change to shot to accommodate some else’s vision.

The opinion of others
During my “Better Photo: How to make money with your photography”, my instructor told me that I shouldn’t include people in my landscape photography because it would: a) confuse clients, b) make them think that I’m not serious about landscape photography. Well, everyone has their own opinion, as do I.

The final analysis
Earlier last week, Colin Jago had a great post about this entitled: Do you live in a high contrast world? It certainly is worth a read. It’s about people telling him what he needed to do to ‘improve’ his photos, even though he posted just what he wanted. Colin’s photos aren’t very contrasty, but he lives in a part of the world that, by nature, is not full of contrast. There, it’s cloudy most of the time and his images reflect this. It’s his chosen style to portray what he sees around him. I, on the other hand, live in a very sunny part of the world and therefore, love contrast. Crank it up, baby!

In the final analysis: U B U (you be you) and let others be themselves.

How low can you go?

I’m about 6 feet tall and most of my shots come from about that high off of the ground. Some of the shots, especially when I use wide angle lenses are pointed skyward, but again, from that same vantage point.

Sometimes I have to make a conscious effort to take a different perspective on things. This is akin to working the shot as I said in yesterday’s post.

While here in New Mexico, I have taken hundreds of pictures of sand dunes. I’ve approached them in several different ways both in the literal sense of portraying them as sand dunes and as abstract lines, shapes, and curves. However, I got pretty bored and wanted something different. Looking around I could see that there are several different species of desert plant eking out a living on the sand dunes so I wanted a closer look. By necessity, all of these plants are very short and low to the ground. The average yearly rainfall for Alamogordo, NM is about 11 inches, growing tall and having massive water requirements is not recommended.

I didn’t want to look down upon them, but more so on their level. This meant getting prone. It’s an amazing perspective shift. You have to not mind getting dirty and having sand in every conceivable location on your body, gear, clothing, etc.

So, here I was, for two days with my Nikon D300 and 50 mm lens just crawling around on the ground, taking pictures, and really having a great time. The only disadvantage that I ‘felt’ was occasionally, a bit of sand would blow into my eyes … a minor inconvenience.

I would have tried even higher perspectives, had there been any other than the tops of mountains. The highest things in the park were the sand dunes.

Taking a break from the sand: Looking around

It is after all, Alamogordo, NM, made famous by White Sands National Monument. There is sand everywhere. So, for those of us who like to shoot different things, why not shoot something different, eh?

On our way to Cloudcroft, NM, we spotted a street carnival and decided to check it out later in the evening after our evening shoot at the sands. When we arrived ‘on the scene’ there were lots of people milling about, mostly kids, excited and having a great time. I wanted to see if I could capture some of that glee that I was experiencing.

For me, the carnival is about excitement and mostly about the rides. So, I wanted to show motion. I set my camera on shutter priority at 1/6 of a second. The carnival was brightly lit, so this was not a problem. As I was going for the motion look, blurring was not a problem, it was a goal.

I decided to concentrate on the kids as they are quite a bit uninhibited about their fun! I shot quite a few shots, all using the, now ubiquitous, 50mm f/1.8 on my D300. Of all of the shots that I took, only about 10% amounted to anything, the rest hit the bit-bucket, but it was an enjoyable experience, well worth it, and a great break from the sand. Icing on the cake, so to speak.

So, when you are in town, don’t forget to check out what the locals are doing. It could be fun and it won’t cost you anything … unless you want to take a ride and perhaps have some cotton candy!