I thought I would dive into stories from my recent travels by sharing some Black & White photos I took in Taos, New Mexico on the 3rd day of our 4-day Colorado to New Mexico roadtrip at the end of May/start of June.
Taos, New Mexico was just screaming for me to pull out my smartphone camera and take photos in B&W, with it’s adobe structures and clear blue skies punctuated with a little cloud here and there.
I’ve loved the work of the photographer Ansel Adams since I was a teenager and while much “cooler” teenagers had posters of the latest “teen idol” on their walls, I had several Ansel Adams posters. I’ve also loved the work of the painter Georgia O’Keeffe (who lived in New Mexico) since I was in my early 20’s and I used to have several Georgia O’Keeffe posters in my room when I was in college (I was fortunate to visit the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum on a trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico 6 years ago, see post Creative Inspiration: Georgia O’Keeffe Museum).
Well our first tourist stop in Taos, NM was the adobe San Francisco de Asís Mission Church at the Ranchos de Taos, which was built 1813 – 1815 and was photographed by Ansel Adams AND painted by Georgia O’Keeffe!
Here is the Ansel Adams photograph “Church Taos Pueblo 1942” courtesy of fineartamerica.com:
Here is the Georgia O’Keeffe painting “Ranchos Church” courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s website:
And here are my photos:
Yup, Mr. Ansel Adams is probably rolling his eyes from the afterlife on my B&W photographs; but I had fun taking them and pretending I understood composition and all those other mystical photograph taking terms – ha!
No I didn’t attempt to paint it like Georgia O’Keeffe did!
Ok so you might notice the church Ansel Adams photographed in the 1930s looks different than the one I photographed in 2024. According to Wikipedia the church has gone through several restorations over the years (we are talking 90+ years between Mr. Adams’ photo and mine) and the article on San Francisco de Asís Mission Church verifies it was photographed by Ansel Adams and painted by Georgia O’Keeffe. (But if you discover my research is wrong, let me know in the comments.)
Here are some other B&W photos I took in Taos. I was fascinated by the old style doors; as well as the simple tree limb fences.
We stayed at an amazing (and very photogenic) Airbnb studio right in the Tao Plaza/Historic Downtown Taos Shopping District, which was a historic adobe Hacienda! Here are photos of the outside of the Airbnb:
And finally (to end your visual torture of seeing my B&W photography attempts), when we visited the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge in Taos, it looked ripe for B&W photos so here you go:
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