The Mission at Tumacacori Arizona
This is Tumacacaori Mission near Tuscon, Arizona.
It isn’t easy for me to ‘find the picture’ when the subject is static, a landscape or architecture, for example
It was a help to have been here before (almost 20 years ago when I was taking photography classes). I remembered this little ‘room’ and this time the light was perfect. Last time I shot black and white. This time I was shooting digital.
I tried to line up the white cupola and the pottery bowl (vertical) using the cross beam (horizontal) to form an imaginary cross. The handmade windows also helped to form a vertical line. This is the “geometry” that I wrote about the other day. It gives an added dimension to your photo. You may not be conscious of it, but the cohesiveness is there.
The soft winter light showed off the unevenness of the hand smoothed adobe walls…texture is good. The blue sky contrasted with the red/gold of the adobe. I had a lot going for me.
Paul Strand ( another master photographer from the twenties to the fifties) has several famous shots of missions and I was trying to emulate him when I was here 20 years ago. I proudly showed the photo to one of my teachers who told me my shot was boring. I was shocked. I was expecting a compliment, at least noting my homage to Paul Strand. I argued that my photo was a ‘copy’ of Paul Strand’s. Nope. Still boring.
As a rebuttal, I brought in my book with Strand’s photograph. “Flat,” was all he said when I showed him Strand’s work. I remember being amazed that anyone would dismiss an icon of American photography.
I learned a lesson. Just because everyone else says something is great, doesn’t mean you have to think so, too. And the opposite is also true. Just because someone tells you that your photo is boring, doesn’t mean you can’t think it is great.