Arizona Treks

Oh yeah, the color film was picked up yesterday afternoon.  It is still being scanned as I write this.  Should be done in a couple of hours.  There is some nice photos in there.

Churches, and mostly architectural photography is something fairly new to me.  Or at least making photographs of architectural subjects that I will show to someone is fairly new to me.  It is something I struggled with for some time.  Making a good composition takes some experimentation and work.  It can be rewarding but mostly with the large format cameras because of the movements.  I see churches as a special type of building that can be grouped together.  The steeples and crosses make them more interesting and distinctive.

Even with an interesting and distinctive subject, you need to compose it well.  Much of the architectural photography I see is poorly composed.  Small format cameras pointed upward create perspective distortion so the building appears to be falling backward.  This can be used artistically but does not work all the time.  I had the opportunity to see a show by a person who specializes in large format architectural photography and was so impressed with his work it stuck with me.  Helped me to learn to see a little differently.

On our trip I shot several churches in different settings.  The one above was found on a scenic drive that took much longer than expected.  We had the privilege to cross private property in out truck but were asked to not leave the vehicle.  I set up the camera on the tripod in the bed of the truck and Mary drove along the path until the angle was right, I then took a couple of photos and had her move a little for a different angle and took a couple more.  In this way we abided by the terms of the permission to cross the private property and still got the photo I wanted.

The photo below was taken in the town of Bodega, very early morning.  I saw it from the highway and we found a better angle on it but the church was on a hill and in this case, that didn't work.  So into the back of the truck.  Tripod as high as practical and come rise to get the best angle on it.