Driving up to Taos, New Mexico for a commercial portrait shoot on my second assignment (see the first) for an industry magazine, I had no idea that I would be photographing someone among his hundreds of accosting 12-string guitars. That is exactly the background I found myself in at the Larry Bell Studio photographing the famous Taos artist, Larry Bell. We went around to various places in his studio, including the 1950s sci-fi looking high vacuum device he has for creating his glassworks. He chose a special guitar from his collection for one of his commercial portraits. He bough the guitar decades ago for just a few dollars. He has subsequently spent thousands restoring it! Thank you Larry for showing me around your studio!
Clouds making for stunning rural land real estate photos in New Mexico
As the best and most prolific rural land real estate photographer in the state of New Mexico, I am constantly looking at weather reports for trying to get the best possible skies for client shoots. On a day like this in Taos, New Mexico, the clouds were absolutely dramatically stunning and the results were over 50 photos from around the Carson Estates area near Taos, New Mexico that delivered exactly what my client, Hemingway Land Company, wanted for grabbing the attention of land buying customers who will likely be buying sight unseen. I covered dozens of miles off road and hours of getting in and out of my Jeep from noon to sunset to create this collection of rural land real estate photographs that will help my client sell the land faster.
Any chance I get to go up to Taos, however brief, is welcome. One a recent afternoon, a client wanted me to make drone video and a 360 panorama aerial drone photo of his luxury home he was planning to sell, even before he had hired a real estate agent! He knew himself the value of drone video in selling a property like his, as he was hoping to attract an out of state and even out of country buyer. The drone video shows the whole property in context with the Taous mountains providing the background. Likewise, the 360 panorama drone aerial photo lets the viewer look around the property as they wish from the drone’s view. Thank you Gary for choosing me as your drone pilot and I hope your property sells quickly!
The ski resort town of Taos, New Mexico is a place one would expect to find sweeping views of mountainlandscapes. For my photograph of such a well known view, I wanted to make it standout by using in the foreground and old, relic of a pickup truck to juxtapose with the natural features of the background. Both the foreground and background contain old things, with the former old in terms of human years, and the latter in terms of geological millennia.
I do not often eat out at restaurants, as I think it is the least value for money in nearly all of modern society. However, after a very long day of photography and drone video at 40+ rural land properties the day before in the middle of nowhere west of Taos, I thought Jessica and the dogs (well, they at least got free water!) deserved a treat. In our previous trips to Taos, we never got to stop at Overland Ranch, which is really just a very mountain-town looking style shopping plaza. This time we did and in it we found the Farmhouse Cafe with its wonderful outdoor setting.
When I first got my DJI Mavic Pro drone in November 2017, the first place I really flew it was in Taos, New Mexico. Driving there I had no idea there was a mini-Grand Canyon just on the edge of the town, so to my great surprise was the Rio Grande Gorge revealed to me! I thought the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge would be a great place to fly the drone, but having such little flying experience and with it being so windy when I visited the bridge, the drone stayed in its case that time. Fast forward to the present, with dozens of flights of experience, having already flown under the Bixby Bridge, with the weather at near ideal conditions I did not hesitate to fly over the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge this time!
