Canon 5D, Tokina 19-35mm, Singh-Ray 3-stop ND Grad
We all have one, if not several. I’m talking about our favorite places to explore. I have several favorite places myself, often returning time and time again each time finding something I haven’t seen or experienced before.
Williams Lake high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains above Taos, New Mexico is one of my favorite places. Nestled in a glacial cirque in the Wheeler Peak Wilderness the lake is surrounded on three sides by tall peaks including the highest mountain in New Mexico, 13,161′ Wheeler Peak. There are many waterfalls and if you visit in the summer you’ll be rewarded with wildflowers including King’s Crown, Marsh Marigold, and some of the best Columbines I’ve ever seen.
Field Notes: To capture this image I hit the trail at 3:45 in the morning for the 2.5 mile (1,000 feet of eleveation change) hike to the lake. It was still completely dark so I hiked by headlamp and actually made better time than expected arriving at the lake in 1 hour and 15 minutes. I scouted the lake in the dark looking for the best location and planning secondary locations to shoot from as the light changed and began to illuminate the peaks.
I used my Canon 5D with the ‘plastic-fantastic’ Tokina 19-35mm lens. The Tokina is a great lens that is wonderfully sharp when the aperture is stopped down as we often do in landscape photography. To balance the range of contrast between the two halves of the image I used a 3-stop, hard-step Singh-Ray graduated neutral density filter. The photo was developed in Photoshop using Tony Kuyper’s Luminosity Masks to boost contrast and to add a little saturation.
Adam Schallau is a photographer whose work explores a variety of topics that
include the landscape, culture and people of the American Southwest and Rocky
Mountains. It is with a profound respect for the land, its people and their
history that Adam sets out to recapture the spirit of a place to tell a story
through his photography.
Adam is a recipient of the Luminous Landscape Endowment Award and was an Artist-in-Residence
at Grand Canyon National Park.
Sometimes the best photographs result from the extreme mental and physical exertion needed to reach one’s destination in time for sunrise. Just look at this work, Erik Stensland’s work on RMNP, and dare I say my own image from Sloan Lake.
If you are not careful, I’ll start calling you the New Mexico Mountain Goat.