Haymes Images

© 2009 Tom Haymes

Yet another image from my recent foray into West Texas. This photograph was taken in the Terlingua Ghost Town west of Big Bend National Park. This town was abandoned in the 1940s and the adobe houses are slowly crumbling into dust. However, it’s now a tourist attraction and the yearly chili cook-off is world famous so the living once again outnumber the dead.

I was initially struck by how the shape of the remaining walls of this house retained a certain symmetry. When I went to process the image in PhotoShop and applied Fred Miranda’s Black-and-White plug-in using its digital infrared filter, the image really came alive. I generally like to have darker skies and the light stone really keys off of the sky. The digital infrared enhanced this effect by lightening up the stone to the point where it almost seems to glow with a ghostly aura. Perfect for a ghost town!

© 2009 Tom Haymes

This picture was taken less than an hour after the previous posted image in Big Bend National Park. We stopped at an overlook on our way to dinner after a long day’s hiking and shooting. The atmosphere on top of this mountain was almost claustrophobic. I felt like I was in a giant room when I looked out toward the southwest (the previous picture was taken just to the right of the gap in the cliffs in the distance which is Santa Elena Canyon). I really like how the subtle layers and clouds fade into one another. This was one where the moment really worked.

I posted this shot in part because I wanted to emphasize how important it is to shoot and to shoot a lot. Digital makes that easy (and a lot cheaper than it was in film days). I shot this picture toward the end of a week traveling through West Texas in which I shot over 3000 shots over the course of 5 days. In film days, I probably never shot more than 3000 pictures a year. When I am not on vacation it’s often a struggle to get any shooting in. I got a number of really good shots on this particular day because I was really in a groove that day and things were falling into place visually. I also got lucky with the weather.

Travel photography is especially tricky because you can never stay in one place long enough to get in touch with its moods. A local photographer has a huge advantage in this area. One of the reasons that Ansel Adams was so successful in Yosemite is that he actually lived there a good portion of his life. It’s tough to get in touch with the subtleties of light and shadow in a particular environment in a day or two. Sometimes you get lucky (then again luck favors the prepared).

Did I get the best shots ever of Big Bend? Probably not. However, I am pretty satisfied with my efforts there. I’d like to spend some months living there to see what else I can get out of that environment. However, that’s probably unlikely because, unlike Ansel, photography is not my primary job.

©2009 Tom Haymes

We just returned from a Spring Break trip to West Texas. I shot a lot of pictures on the trip but this was one of those that I was able to immediately visualize as we left Santa Elena Canyon. The clouds were cooperative, too.

Ansel Adams shot a picture of the canyon sixty years ago. Adams’s image shows a direct view of the canyon and is immediately to the right of this image. I remembered the picture as we visited the canyon but I didn’t have the book to reference his shot. I attempted to duplicate his shot but my attempt was less satisfying because the sun was directly overhead and behind the canyon. (Never try to imitate the master.)

However, after we emerged from our hike into the canyon, I saw this picture almost immediately. I had been trying the entire time we were there to convey the scale of the 1500 ft. cliff walls that line the Mexican side of the border but was frustrated inside the canyon itself. It was only with the long, converging perspective in this image that I felt like I achieved my goal. Since the sun was already behind the cliffs (which helped the clouds), I lightened up the cliff walls a bit in PhotoShop, but other than that (and the black-and-white conversion), this is pretty much as shot.

©2007 Tom Haymes

This photo is in the current issue of Popular Photography. I shot this one weekend in late 2007 as part of my series of photos on Houston Skyscrapers. Sometimes I like to give myself projects as a way to challenge my creativity. In this case, I wanted to try to capture unique perspectives of the 25 tallest buildings in Houston.

In this instance, I was out shooting with my two children. My daughter actually got some nice shots. I actually think she captured this building better than me. The Pennzoil building is a really interesting construction and lends itself well to photography. The real problem with it nowadays if that it’s surrounded by other buildings and it’s often hard to get shots with a lot of direct light. In this case, the light was behind the building so I exposed for the foreground and let the slit of sunlight burn out. The lines just worked themselves out.

© 2009 Tom Haymes

I was out scouting for an opportunity to complete an assignment for the Fred Miranda weekly photo contest, which was “Sunrise” that week. The clouds were not cooperating with me on this particular day (neither were the Katy Police who questioned me regarding my suspicious – read “terroristic” – photography activity) and I didn’t actually see the sun coming up.

The sun broke through the clouds a few minutes after sunrise and I noticed how the soft light was illuminating the derelict rice silos along US 90 in Katy. I was able to pull over and get close enough to them before the quality of the light faded. The silos are one of the more interesting features of Katy and I’ve photographed them before (see my Katy set for additional examples). It never fails to amaze me how their color and texture pick up on different qualities of light.

I did eventually get a sunrise shot for the assignment, BTW, but, photographically speaking, I find this image to be far more satisfying.

©2009 Tom Haymes

This is a door along the wall of the Mission San Jose in San Antonio, Texas. As I walked through the gate, I was immediately struck by the patterns of light and shadow cast by the 4 pm late winter sunlight. This was literally the first shot of the day. (It’s funny how often I shoot hundreds of shots and it’s the very first one that is the winner.)

I  pictured this as a black-and-white image from the beginning as the tones were largely brown. When I processed this in Photoshop I added an orange filter effect to accentuate the textures in the wall and the wood of the “canopy”. There are many other shots of my foray through the missions of San Antonio in my San Antonio set.