Haymes Images

©2009 Tom Haymes

This is another image from my Yosemite expedition and is yet another example of the amazing light of that place. As a photographer, I’ve become a student of light and that helps me recognize the different colors that nature is likely to provide to me. One of the advantages of specializing is that you can really focus on what works in your areas of expertise. I don’t do much flash photography and so I generally resist attempts to get me to do weddings, portraits, or other studio work in general. This is because that kind of photography demands a completely different kind of eye and expertise than the architectural/landscape photography that I do pursue.

Another advantage I have is that I live in a place that is visually far less exciting than Yosemite. Light and the sky are the main things going for Katy, Texas, photographically speaking. Therefore, I am always looking for an opportunity to exploit those. When I do get the opportunity to shoot somewhere that is visually stunning like Yosemite or West Texas (or even Houston) I take those skills with me and can maximize my efforts in the limited time I have to spend there.

In this case, I was doubly lucky in that Yosemite offered me a great set of vistas in the 12 hours I was actually in the park. The weather was as close to perfect as I could have asked for and I was treated to visually exciting vistas such as this one. This cloud actually sat on the top of Half Dome for over an hour. I first spotted it at dinnertime but I was in a much more difficult shooting location at that time. I did shoot an image at that time but the combination of the warmer lighting and greater freedom in framing the shot made this the stronger of the two shots. However, I trace of the success of this image to knowing exactly how to visualize the shot with the developing light and that comes from my years of shooting light in places like Katy.

©2009 Tom Haymes

I made the pilgrimage to Yellowstone National Park. An experience I recommend to any photographer. I was amazed at the number of pictures I was able to get in just 12 hours (I am still going through them). I have a new appreciation for the work of Ansel Adams. It really helps when you live there year-round. The variation of light in only 12 hours was amazing.

This picture was shot from near Glacier Point and was one of the earlier ones from the day. It wasn’t the best lighting but it worked out with the clouds. Punching through the haze required a polarizer and some adjustments were necessary in PhotoShop but I am happy with the result. Check my Flickr page (see link on right) for many more Yosemite shots.

© 2009 Tom Haymes

I finally got back downtown to do some shooting on a decent day this weekend. I really like the Continental Airlines Building because it looks different from every angle. Other shots I’ve taken of it look like this:

©2008 Tom Haymes

And this:

©2009 Tom Haymes

One of the keys to successful architectural photography is finding unusual angles and this building has plenty of them. Architectural photography is both easy and hard this way. It’s possible to make any building look unusual if you think hard enough about it. At the same time, however, you have to maintain the balance of the picture (not necessarily symmetrical either) and still make a pleasing shot.

Also, it’s important to remember that buildings, generally speaking, don’t go anywhere and that, especially if it’s something like a skyscraper or other landmark, thousands (or even millions) of other people have already taken a picture of it. The trick there is to do something unusual while still making a good picture. It’s a challenging, but fun, intellectual exercise. I think the outcome, however, is well worth it.

©2009 Tom Haymes

 I really liked the texture in the worn wood of this odd-looking sculpture in front of the Brazos Valley Center in Bryan, Texas. I was there for the Lone Star Art Guild Show.

It’s a funny thing about black-and-whites. Typically, only other photographers appreciate them. I never have much luck with them in non-photographer-judged shows, like the LSAG (which is judged by painters). I also don’t sell many of them (except to other photographers).

A lot of subtlety goes into making an effective black-and-white and many non-practitioners assume that since you don’t have to fiddle with color, it’s easier to do a black-and-white. Actually, it’s usually the other way around. Color pictures (at least for me) tend to work right out of the camera, so to speak. Black-and-white requires you to make two leaps in your pre-visualization process. First, you have to imagine how the image is going to translate from 3-D to 2-D and then you have to visualize the effect of translating from the color reality to black-and-white. It also helps to have some understanding of the filter options and how they will change the look of your black-and-white shot. One of the nice things about Fred Miranda’s B&W Workflow Pro is that it allows you to play with a set of traditional black-and-white filters after the fact in PhotoShop (something that wasn’t possible in the old days).

However, I find that if I don’t get the pre-visualization right in the first place, no amount of messing around in PhotoShop will save the image. In this case, I saw the Red Filter all the way through as a way of distinguishing the sculpture from the somewhat washed out sky in the background and as a way of popping the clouds to complete the contrast of the image.

©2009 Tom Haymes

This is one of my more recent architectural photos. I really like going into downtown Houston and trying to figure out new ways of looking at the buildings under varying lighting conditions. In this case. the rippling reflection of the Wells Fargo building in the Reliant Energy building caught my eye as I was crossing the street. It really reminded me of water. Coupled with the interesting patterns and reflections from the Tenneco building, this shot worked out nicely. I had to shoot from the middle of the street, which is one reason why I tend to shoot down there on Sundays when the traffic is light.

© 2009 Tom Haymes

This image was taken the first evening we were in the Davis Mountains. The state park there has a road that goes to the top of a small hill that offers a dramatic view of the valley in which Fort Davis lies. What really struck me about this trip to the Davis Mountains was the amazing colors created by the dead winter grass throughout the area. Coupled with the evening light, this created a dramatic golden light that accentuated the blue of the desert sky. In this case I also used a polarizer to maximize the effect.

The wizened tree provided a perfect foreground for the valley and mountains in the background. When possible, it is often a good technique to create a “near-far” dynamic in a photo. This is sometimes difficult to achieve but in this case it worked out perfectly as the tree, which was a few feet in front of me, is backed by the mountains, which are 20 miles away. I find this image to be one of the most satisfying from the entire trip.

© 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.