Photographer Abigail Grey, of Richmond, Virginia, enjoyed flexing her creative muscles during a recent assignment. Not only was she traveling somewhere — New Mexico — for the first time, she was given the chance to be flexible and take matters into her own hands with regard to creating imagery. The catch? The story was about Chip Gaines, a New Mexico native who owns The Magnolia Journal, the publication for which this work was done.
This was my first editorial assignment of this caliber and the instructions were pretty vague. I enjoy challenges like this, so it was exhilarating and I felt like I was thriving. It ended up being one of my top five best experiences of 2019.
Chip Gaines, the subject of the story, is from New Mexico and had taken a trip to Taos, Santa Fe and Albuquerque with his family a few months prior. They provided a list of restaurants, businesses, and hotels for me to visit and photograph, but I was responsible for contacting locations, organizing shoots, and making executive decisions.
After finding Abigail’s work online, Magnolia’s art director decided to bring the New England-based freelancer on board for this New Mexico story, titled “The Road Back Home.” The piece features Chip showing his children his old stomping grounds around the state, simultaneously acting as a tourism brochure that highlights the various cultural scenes in the “Land of Enchantment.” Since Abigail is a travel photographer who moved around a lot early in life, venturing to a new place wasn’t an issue (even considering all the aforementioned workload caveats).
They had been interested in hiring me for a Vermont based project but saw I wasn’t available for those dates. So, they decided to pull me in on this project. I’m a naturally curious person and moved around a good bit as a kid, so I’ve always found it fascinating to learn where people are from, what makes a culture the way it is, what makes people the way they are, and how place is so important to who we are as humans.
Chip and his family had gone back to New Mexico a few months before Abigail got there, so she had their words as a reference point. Though she landed this assignment a few days before leaving, she managed to draw on old experiences to mentally prepare herself for the shoot. Some surprises awaited Abigail, who adjusted her visual approach accordingly.
I had never been to New Mexico and truly knew little about it. I’ve spent a good amount of time out west, and this experience for some reason really influenced my perspective of capturing the land. I wasn’t able to do a ton of research as I was put on the project about a week before the trip, but I read up as much as I could and tried to converse with everyone I came in contact with.
I flew out there assuming it would be all desert and dust but it was actually a mix of desert and lush green mountains in the North. It was fascinating. I tried to mix the two, with my natural editing style leaning a bit more heavily on high contrast, deep colors, and playing with moody light. But there was also a dusty, desert clay aesthetic that I wanted to lean into as well. It felt good to combine the two and, luckily, it worked!
After three long days, Abigail was nearly done. She still had to sift through thousands of photos, edit her favorites, and send them along to the client. The home stretch of the assignment is another example of that “terrified but thriving” mindset. For people like Abigail, the more daunting the task, the more exhilarating the experience.
At the end of the trip, I had about 4,000 photos but obviously was going to give them fewer than that. I edited them in a couple of days but, again, I love situations like that so it was invigorating.
The client was so enamored with Abigail’s work that they decided to bring her back into the fold for the Fall 2020 edition of The Magnolia Journal.
It was my favorite assignment of the year! Everyone loved the work; they felt as if the images perfectly captured the feel they were looking for and, since then, I’ve been working with them on their next fall edition! And New Mexico is absolutely beautiful. I would 10000% go back.
See more of Abigail’s work at abigailgreyphoto.com.
Further Reading:
Read more about Abigail Grey on our Published blog
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