Cover Shot – Rocky Mountain Nature Photographers

Adam Schallau — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 05:48:53 +0000

My peers at the Rocky Mountain Nature Photographers have selected this image to be the cover shot which will great visitors to their website during the month of January 2009. This image was captured a few minutes after sunset on the boardwalk at the Cibolo Nature Center in Boerne, Texas. Located about 30 miles north of San Antonio, the Cibolo Nature Center contains over 100 acres of nature trails and wilderness and was one of my favorite places to hike when I was growing up in Texas.

Please click on the image for an expanded view.

A Favorite Place ~ Williams Lake, New Mexico

Adam Schallau — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:59:12 +0000

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.

Across the Southwest » Favorite Place

Cover Shot – Rocky Mountain Nature Photographers

A Favorite Place ~ Williams Lake, New Mexico