(Some of) Ann’s US Trip Photos
If you’ve been following the blog, you know the sequence of our shooting sessions on our road trip to Phoneix. Arrive in the afternoon, photograph, up in the morning, photograph, drive to the next location. It wasn’t ideal, but I must say I think Ann made the best of it.
Our first afternoon of photographing was in the Alabama Hills, where we explored a drive we’d never been down before. I don’t know how we missed it, but we had and I’m glad we found it. The late afternoon sun did wonders with the rocks and the plants . . . we couldn’t have asked for more. And Ann took full advantage of that to make images that really give a feel for the place.
Ann and I have been talking about photography a lot and, if the previous Cacti post hadn’t convinced you, Ann is expanding the range of the types of images she’s seeing and making. I think it helped that the late spring growth was starting to come and there was so much more color than we’d seen before (it had been a wet winter) with late February storms.
I think Ann is getting better at quickly adapting to new environments. We didn’t have a lot of flexibility in the morning we spent at the Alabama Hills. We took our best guess for a potential morning shot location, moved to one more location, and then hit the road.
At our first stop, Ann made three similar, but distinctly different images of the grander landscape. It was hard to pick one over the others, so I just picked one that caught the first rays of light breaking through the low-lying clouds on the horizon (you can barely see the reddish glow of the Ridgeline, and a streaking of light on the valley floor.
Ann also did a superb job at the second stop, waiting for the light to expose areas she wanted and having the patience to wait for the clouds to darken the background mountains. She wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but she’s learning that sometimes you just make the image and then see how it turns out. Trust your instincts. There’s nothing worse than being down the road and saying, “You know, I really should have set up my camera and made that shot.”
Ann also took good advantage of our short stop in Death Valley. Again, a couple of places hit on the run, and then back on the road. You couldn’t tell by the images she selected to develop.
The scale of these features is beguiling, but they’re visually accessible in this mix of textures, color and forms.
As I noted above, Ann’s been experimenting a lot more than previously, and discovering how wonderful cropping and light can be, even with what at first seems to be an insignificant subject.
Sometimes I think the reason a photographer should make images like the one above is because you learn about light and it helps you be able to see and make images like the one below. I suspect if this one is printed larger, the grasses would be mesmerizing.
So as you can tell, I’ve really enjoyed whenever Ann texts me to look at one of her images. I know that she’s given it a lot of thought to which image to work on and, face it, she has a lot of good material to work with. That, and she does a wonderful job of developing the image.
I just wish getting her to let me publish her photographs wasn’t like trying to pull teeth.