Across the Southwest » Environment

Desert Bighorn – Curecanti Recreation Area

Adam Schallau — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:03:10 +0000

This big guy was definitely aware of me and actually seemed very willing to strike a pose. This photo has been sitting in my archives since last September and I finally got around to working on it this morning. It’s always a wonderful experience to see a magnificent creature like this in the wild, photographing it is a nice bonus!

~Tech details~
Camera Canon EOS 50D
Lens: Canon EF300mm f/4L IS USM lens
Exposure: 1/500 second, f/6.3 and ISO 320
Filters: none

Notes: Processed in Adobe Lightroom

A Winter Morning in the Forest

Adam Schallau — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:45:07 +0000

A winter morning at Grand Canyon National Park. The canyon was completely socked-in so I took a stroll through the forest.

~Tech details~
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: Canon EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens
Exposure: 1/6 second, f/16 and ISO 100
Filters: none

Notes: Processed in Adobe Lightroom

A visit to Chaco Canyon

Adam Schallau — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:52:52 +0000

A place far from the modern, civilized, world. A place of extremes with brutally frigid winters and scorching hot summers. A place that was once inhabited by the Ancestral Puebloans and was perhaps the trade and spiritual center of their world. A place called Chaco.

Located in Chaco Canyon in far northwestern New Mexico, Chaco Culture National Historical Park protects some of the largest Ancestral Puebloan ruins in the American Southwest. Among these ruins is Pueblo Bonito, the largest Great House in the park which is believed to have been inhabited between AD 828 and 1126. Covering nearly two acres of land it was once four stories tall and may have contained as many as 800 rooms.

Photographically speaking, Pueblo Bonito is an extremely exciting subject to work with. I suggest that photographers come prepared with ultra-wide angle and medium length zooms to capture the interior of the pueblo. The photo of the T-shaped door above and the photo looking up through the pueblo on the left were both created using a Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L lens at the 16mm setting on a 5D Mark II camera.

The exterior of the pueblo can be captured using a a full-array of focal lengths from ultra-wide to telephoto. The photo on the right was captured with my Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS lens set at 150mm. I chose this lens to isolate the back wall of the pueblo against the canyon wall, both of which were bathed in a warm, late-evening light.

In a few days I’ll be sharing more photos from my trip to Chaco Canyon and will be discussing additional photo opportunities in the area.

Ice Fishing Article in New Mexico Magazine

Adam Schallau — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:58:00 +0000

I’m very excited to share with you the completed product of the first magazine assignment that I shot. The January 2010 issue of New Mexico Magazine features an article titled ‘Ice Breakers’ by Arnold Vigil with the photos shot by yours truly.

Most people know New Mexico for it’s beautiful deserts and canyons as well as it’s tremendous Spanish and Native American cultural sites. But what a lot of people don’t know is that we also have beautiful mountains and high-altitude lakes. The mountains between Taos and Angel Fire, the Sangre de Cristo Range, have peaks reaching to over 13,000 feet above sea-level with many lakes scattered amongst them. The largest lake in the range is 2,400 acre Eagle Nest Lake.

This past February I spent a good part of an extremely cold winter day on the ice at Eagle Nest Lake State Park photographing ice-fishermen braving air temperatures in the mid-teens. People from all walks of life, young and old, were out on the ice. I could not have asked for a better group of people to be the subjects of my first magazine assignment. Everyone was very approachable and extremely eager to share their knowledge and love for the sport of ice fishing. I’d like to thank everyone who shared their day with me.

For the camera equipment junkies that might be interested in the equipment I used for the assignment, I can tell you that I primarily used a Canon 5D Mark II with the 24-105/4L lens, and the original 5D with 17-40/4L lens. Shooting with two camera bodies made it much easier to shoot. The last thing I really wanted to do was try to change lenses in the cold air and blowing snow.

Cypress on the Guadalupe

Adam Schallau — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 04:31:57 +0000

Sally and I made a trip to Texas over the Thanksgiving holiday to visit family in the San Antonio area. While we were there, we had an opportunity to spend some time exploring the Guadalupe River near the town of Comfort. I love the Guadalupe and have canoed it many times from Comfort to Guadalupe River State Park, and my great grandparents had a home on it near New Braunfels at one time.One of my favorite subjects to photograph are the cypress trees that line the banks of the river such as this example at James Kiehl River Bend Park.

James Kiehl River Bend Park is a new park dedicated in memory of United States Army Specialist James H. Kiehl from Comfort, Texas. Spc. Kiehl was killed in action on March 23rd, 2003 after his convoy was ambushed in Iraq. He was assigned to the 507th Maintenance Company, Fort Bliss, Texas.

~Tech details~
Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: Canon EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM lens
Exposure: 1/2 second, f/16 and ISO 50
Filters: Hoya HD Circular Polarizer

Notes: Processed in Adobe Lightroom

Sunset from Horseshoe Bend

A Cold Morning at the Gorge in Taos

Adam Schallau — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:21:43 +0000

Holy smokes was it cold this past Friday! I got up at sunrise to photograph the Rio Grande Gorge in early morning light with a fresh snow covering the rocks. As I drove out of town I noticed that bank sign was reading 12 degrees Fahrenheit, and the coldest part of the morning was yet to come. What a lot of people don’t realize is that Taos can get cold…very cold. To put it bluntly, we got down to 5 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind started to blow. Ugh! Enough whining from me, here the photo:

~Tech details~
Camera & Lens: Canon EOS 5D Mark II and EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM lens
Exposure: 20 seconds, f/11 and ISO 100 ( for the canyon, see notes below)
Filters: Hoya HD Circular Polarizer
Notes: I manually blended two exposures, one for the gorge and another for the sky to handle the dynamic range in this image. It was simply too cold to try to hand-hold my Singh-Ray graduated neutral density filter in front of the lens.

Ute Mountain surrounded by fog

Adam Schallau — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:03:07 +0000

Ute Mountain surrounded by fog

On a recent trip to Colorado to photograph fall color I got stuck in New Mexico. It wasn’t because of car trouble or work obligations, it was because we had some of the most amazing fog I’ve ever seen in the desert. It’s important to understand that fog is not exactly a common occurrence in the high, dry desert of northern New Mexico. So when my wife and I finally broke into the clear and could see Ute Mountain apparently floating on a blanket of fog, I had to stop and shoot and shoot and shoot…until I had over 100 photos of this rare scene in front of us.

~Tech details~
Camera & Lens: Canon EOS 5D Mark II and EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM lens
Exposure: 1/125 seconds, f/11 and ISO 100
Filters: Hoya HD Circular Polarizer

Cumbres & Toltec Railroad – An Early Morning

Adam Schallau — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 05:11:41 +0000

Engine 484 of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad prepares to leave the station in Antonito, Colorado on a cool September morning.

This was a photo of opportunity. I was on my way to Crested Butte to photograph fall color and had nothing but fall color on the brain. It felt a bit ironic to photograph this magnificent piece of western history, and in color no-less, when golden aspens were only a couple hours away.

~Tech details~
Camera & Lens: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM lens
Exposure: 1/320 second, f/11 and ISO 400
Filters: Hoya HD Circular Polarizer
Notes: hand-held

The Search for Fall Color

Adam Schallau — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:24:38 +0000

I recently returned from four days in Colorado in search of fall color. It was a bit more difficult this year to find good color with many areas running a bit late in turning and the color was not as vivid as it has been in the past. Did this have an effect on my photography? It did, but probably not in the way you might expect.

I had several grand landscapes in mind that I would like to have captured, but due to the conditions, I focused (pun intended) more on intimate landscapes. The image below is one such example. This photo was captured on Ohio Pass located in the West Elk Mountains between Gunnison and Crested Butte.

When the conditions don’t work out as planned, it’s important to keep your mind open to other possibilities.

~Tech details~
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM lens
Exposure: 1.6 seconds, f/32 and ISO 400
Filters: none
Notes: processed in Lightroom

Ripples and Light ~ Blue Mesa Reservoir

Adam Schallau — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 05:23:55 +0000

Here’s something a little different for me, a sunset photo (I know, nothing new so far) captured along the shoreline of Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison, Colorado.

~Tech details~
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: EF16-35mm f/2.8L Mark II USM lens
Exposure: 2 seconds, f/22 and ISO 400
Filters: Singh-Ray, Daryl Benson Reverse Graduated Neutral Density 3-stop, 4″x6″ – hand-held