NM Ghost Towns - Photography Triads

We are continuing on with the results of the great photographic experiment adventure. 

Seeing the results of the black and white photos from the first day, I was inspired to use our fish eye lens. This is a lens that magnifies and distorts. It is great for panoramas and also for catching detail. I have never been that enamored with it. Wife has loved it and uses it all the time. But there was something about the idea of the additional distortion and greater detail that seemed to me to be ideal for the kinds of experimenting I was doing. 

So I finished up our time at Lake Valley using it. Then we ventured up the road to Hillsboro where I used it exclusively. This post will only include part of the Hillsboro pictures as I want to keep the number of photos limited per post. For most of the images, there are the three versions I was shooting. They were:

• Black and white at normal exposure
• Black and white under exposed three stops
• Color under exposed three stops 

I am very interested in your feed back. So I've numbered them to make it easier to comment. Remember this is just an experiment on my part so whatever you say is good for me to hear. 

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

 

 

27

28

29

30

31

32

All About Photography - Playing With Black And White @ Lake Valley Ghost Town

 There are 'ghost town' and there are 'ghost towns'. Lake Valley is truly a 'ghost town'. There is no current human inhabitants there. It is nothing but a bunch of ruins in the stark desert landscape of Southern New Mexico. 

The stories of all these ghost towns is the same. They only differ in the particulars. Precious metal ore is discovered. Huge rush of people follows. Organization into a town follows. Brief period of boom prosperity. The mine stops producing. The town starts to deteriorate. Ghost town status eventually follows. Fill in the blank for the specific name of the town.

So this post is not about the history of this particular ghost town. It is about photography. Specifically, my using the lessons I learned in Penang in January on the use of shadows and contrast. I focused mostly on black and white. I evolved over the day. I started to take each shot three ways - black and white regular exposure, black and white underexposed, color under exposed. In the majority of cases, I chose one of the three options I thought came out best. But at the end there is a study of a space where I show all three variations.