The Rio Grande Zoo: Cottonwood Shade and the Enclosure Problem
The Hyatt Regency Tamaya, Bernalillo: The Light Through the Day
Everything builds to the moment the range turns colour.
One thing has to be said before the light, because it governs conduct rather than technique.
The Hyatt Regency Tamaya stands near Bernalillo in the middle Rio Grande valley, on land belonging to the Pueblo of Santa Ana. It is a resort operated in partnership with the Pueblo, which is a sovereign nation with its own government, its own laws and its own rules about photography.
That matters practically. Photography on pueblo land is frequently restricted, and those restrictions are serious rather than nominal — certain areas, certain buildings, ceremonial activity and people may not be photographed at all, and permits may be required for anything beyond ordinary guest use. A resort’s own grounds are a commercial hospitality setting where wedding photography is entirely normal; the surrounding pueblo land is not a backdrop and should not be treated as one.
So establish, in writing and in advance, exactly where photography is permitted and where it is not. Ask through the resort, take the answer literally, and do not improvise beyond it. Cultural material — architecture, art, objects, anything that belongs to the community rather than to the hotel — is not decoration for a wedding portrait, and a photographer who treats it as such is doing something worse than making a bad frame.
Done properly, this is a setting of real quality, and the reason is the light.
The resort sits at around fifteen hundred and seventy metres in a wide river valley, with a substantial mountain range rising to the east and a cottonwood gallery forest along the river to the west. The building itself is low, spread out and finished in earth-toned stucco in the regional manner.
Three facts govern the day. The altitude, which produces very thin, very dry air: shadows are hard and four or five stops below the lit subject with almost no fill available, the sky is deeply saturated rather than pale, distance resolves with extraordinary clarity, and ultraviolet is strong enough that sunburn happens faster than anyone plans for.
The river forest, which is the only substantial shade for miles and turns brilliant gold for a fortnight in autumn.
And the mountains, which are the point. The range east of here presents a steep west-facing escarpment to the valley, which means that in the last minutes of the day the low sun strikes it directly and the whole face changes colour — through orange to a deep rose-pink that gives the range its name. It is the defining light event of this landscape and everything in a wedding day here should be arranged around it.
Hour by hour, then, it goes as follows.
The Hyatt Regency Tamaya at a glance
| Where | A resort on Santa Ana Pueblo land in the Rio Grande valley near Bernalillo, ~1,570 m |
| Establish first | Where photography is permitted on pueblo land, in writing. Take it literally. |
| The light event | The east range’s west face turns deep rose-pink in the last minutes of the day |
| The shade | A cottonwood gallery forest along the river — the only real canopy for miles |
| The air | Thin and dry: hard shadows, no fill, saturated sky, extraordinary clarity |
Morning and the middle of the day
The morning here is the best working light of the day and it is worth getting up for.
At this altitude in this air the first hour after sunrise is extraordinarily clear — no haze, no thermal activity, and a low sun coming from behind the mountains to the east. That means the range itself is backlit and reads as a flat silhouette, while the valley floor and the building take warm light from a very low angle.
So morning belongs to the foreground rather than to the mountains. The stucco walls of the building take that low light beautifully: earth-toned render is a matte, warm, finely textured surface that reads as material in raking light and as a flat plane under a high sun. A subject beside a sunlit stucco wall in the first hour is lit warmly and generously, with the wall throwing a soft warm fill back onto the shadow side.
That warm bounce is worth knowing about because it is strong. An earth-toned wall in direct sun throws a noticeably warm cast onto anybody within a metre or two of it — which here is usually flattering rather than not, but it is a real shift and it needs allowing for when the same set includes frames made in neutral light.
The river forest is the other morning subject and the best time to be in it. A cottonwood gallery along a desert river is dense, tall and enclosed, which makes it a completely different environment from the open valley — and in the early morning, before the day heats, it is cool, still and often holds a little mist off the water.
Photograph along the river rather than across it, so the trunks recede in layers. Cottonwood bark is deeply furrowed and pale grey, which takes raking light well, and the trees are large enough that a person beneath one is genuinely small.
Two canopy rules apply as always, and in a dense bosque they matter: position for open sky arriving from the side rather than light filtered through leaves, which is genuinely green, and avoid dappled shade entirely, because hard bright patches several stops above the surrounding skin cannot be recovered. In a gallery forest the dapple is severe, so work at the edge of the canopy or in a clearing.
Establish where in the bosque you may actually go, because river corridors on or adjacent to pueblo land may be restricted and the answer is not obvious.
Through the morning the sun climbs and the day’s character changes quickly. By mid-morning the valley floor is brightly and evenly lit, the mountains have gone from silhouette to flatly front-lit, and the light has lost its direction.
The middle of the day is the block to plan around, and at this latitude and altitude it is harder than the numbers suggest. The midsummer noon sun reaches about seventy-eight degrees, which is high, and in air this dry there is almost no scattered fill — so shadows are not merely dark but nearly empty, and the range between a lit stucco wall and its own shadow is four or five stops.
There are three answers and they are all on the property. The cottonwoods, which are the only real canopy and which cast solid shade rather than dapple if you are deep enough in. Any covered outdoor space the building has — a portal, a colonnade, a deep overhang — which at this latitude is the best portrait light available at any hour, because the roof removes the overhead sky and what reaches you arrives horizontally with the paving bouncing a little back up. And the interiors, which do not care about the hour at all.
Work about a metre inside the line of any covered edge, with the subject facing out. Falloff from a covered edge is roughly a stop per step, so the positions are precise rather than approximate.
The midday subject, rather than the midday portrait, is the mountains. A high sun on a rock escarpment is flat and unhelpful for colour, but the clarity of the air at this altitude means the range resolves with extraordinary detail — every canyon, ridge and rockfall legible at a long focal length. A compressed frame of the range’s structure at noon is a genuinely good photograph and it is not available at sea level.
Two practical midday notes. It is dry enough that people dehydrate faster than they realise, at an altitude that makes it worse, and alcohol has a markedly stronger effect than expected — worth a word to the couple. And the diurnal range is large: a June afternoon in the mid thirties can be near fifteen degrees by ten at night, so an outdoor reception needs heating and a bride in a summer dress will be cold by then.
Late afternoon, and the range
From about ninety minutes before sunset the day turns, and it turns toward the east.
This is the reverse of most of the venues in this library, and it is worth being explicit about. The sun sets in the west, over the open valley and the river forest, and that is a perfectly good frame — a low sun through cottonwoods, or across open desert, with the couple backlit. But it is not the frame this landscape is known for.
The frame is behind you. As the sun drops in the west, it strikes the west-facing escarpment of the range to the east at an increasingly low angle, and because that face is granite and largely bare it takes the light directly and completely. The sequence runs over perhaps twenty minutes: the face goes from grey to warm, then to orange, then — in the last minutes, when the light has travelled furthest through the lower atmosphere — to a deep rose-pink.
That pink is the reason the range is named what it is named, it is unmistakable, and it is the single best thing about photographing here.
So the plan for the last half hour is: turn round. Put the couple in the foreground with the lit range behind them, and expose for the mountain rather than for them.
That is the technical crux, because by the time the face is pink the valley floor is already in shadow. At any exposure that holds the mountain’s colour, a face on the valley floor is unlit — which means the couple have to be lit by you. One small warmed source at low power, feathered so there is no visible pool on the ground, set up before the sequence rather than during it, because the whole thing lasts minutes and the best of it lasts two or three.
Compress it. At twenty-four millimetres a mountain range ten or fifteen kilometres away is a small band along the top of the frame; at a hundred and thirty-five it fills the background as a wall of colour. The long lens is what makes this frame work, and it means the couple have to be further from the camera than instinct suggests — which is fine, because they should be small anyway.
Two refinements. Watch for cloud, because a range lit pink under a broken sky with shafts coming through is considerably better than the same range under clear blue, and the monsoon season provides that regularly. And watch the snow line in winter, because a snow-covered escarpment taking pink light is the most spectacular version of this frame and it happens on perhaps a dozen evenings a year.
After the mountain has faded, turn back to the west for the balance point. At about thirty-five degrees north, civil twilight runs roughly twenty-five minutes, and at this altitude in dry air the afterglow runs longer and considerably more strongly coloured than that suggests, because you are seeing light scattered from air well above you. Budget fifteen to eighteen usable minutes rather than ten.
The western frame at that hour is the open valley or the bosque against a colour gradient, with the couple as silhouettes or lit by one source. The cottonwoods are especially good for it: a gallery of bare or gold trunks against a deep orange sky is a strong graphic composition.
And then it is properly dark. This is a rural valley with modest light pollution, which means everything after twilight is lit entirely by you — and that the night sky is genuinely good. A frame of the couple softly lit with stars above the range is available here in a way it is not near a city, and it needs a tripod, a fast wide lens and about twenty seconds.
One scheduling note that follows from all of this. Because the mountain frame and the western balance point are in opposite directions and about fifteen minutes apart, they are both achievable in one session if the positions are chosen in advance and they are close together. Mark both on a scout. That is twenty minutes of the day that produces the two best photographs in it, and it is the twenty minutes most likely to be lost to a receiving line.
Ask also whether lights on stands are permitted outdoors and where. On a property whose best frames are outdoor and after sunset, that is not a detail.
The valley, and the year
Two features of this landscape do most of the work and the first is the cottonwoods.
A desert river supports a gallery forest along its banks — a narrow, dense, tall band of cottonwood and willow in an otherwise open landscape — and the Rio Grande’s is among the most extensive anywhere. Those trees are the only substantial shade for a considerable distance, they are the only real canopy, and for a fortnight in autumn they are the best thing in the state.
Cottonwood turns a brilliant uniform gold in late October and early November and then drops quickly. A gallery of gold cottonwood along a river, with a blue-grey mountain range behind it and a deeply saturated sky above, is a three-colour landscape that has very few equals, and it lasts about two weeks. If a couple is choosing a date for the landscape, that is the answer, and it should be said plainly.
The rest of the year the bosque is green and dense in summer, and in winter it is bare grey-white trunks — which against snow on the mountains is austere and rather beautiful, and which lets far more light down to the floor than the summer canopy does.
The second feature is the desert palette, and it is worth understanding rather than dismissing as scrub. The open valley is chamisa, sage, saltbush and grasses: low, silver-grey and finely textured, with a golden flush on the chamisa in late summer. That surface takes low raking light beautifully — every bush throws a shadow and the flat becomes textured with long blue shadows in it — and at noon it is a flat grey-green plane with nothing in it. Same rule as everywhere here: early or late.
The architecture is the third element. Earth-toned stucco in the regional manner is a matte, warm, finely textured surface that reads as material in raking light and throws a strong warm bounce at close range. It also means the building’s own colour sits in the same family as the landscape, which makes a set made here unusually coherent — everything is in the warm end of the spectrum except the sky, which is at the cold end, and that contrast is the palette.
Now the year, and New Mexico’s is clearer than most.
Late September into early November is the best window and the second half of October is the best part of it: the cottonwoods turn, the monsoon has ended, the air is at its clearest, temperatures are comfortable, and the light is low through the whole afternoon. Sunset around six thirty puts the mountain sequence at a civil hour.
One logistical caution attaches to early October in this valley: the region hosts a very large hot-air balloon event that fills accommodation across the area and puts a great many balloons in the sky over the valley on those mornings. That is a genuine scheduling factor and it is also a remarkable photographic opportunity — balloons over a river valley at first light is a frame nowhere else offers. Check the dates and decide which side of them you want to be.
April into early June is the other good window for temperature and for long evenings, and it carries the region’s least-discussed hazard: spring wind. March through May in New Mexico is genuinely windy, with sustained dry winds that lift dust and reduce visibility for hours or days. A veil in that is unmanageable, a lightstand is a hazard, and a dusty sky removes the mountain’s colour entirely. Ask the venue about it; anyone operating here knows.
July through September is the monsoon, and it is the one time of year this desert gets rain. Moisture moves in from the south and produces afternoon thunderstorms — localised, dramatic and often brief — with the highest lightning density of the year. On open desert ground with no shelter, that is a safety matter rather than an inconvenience: know where everyone goes and go early rather than late, and ask what the covered alternative holds as a number.
The monsoon is also the most photogenic season here, which is the trade. Towering cloud over a mountain range, visible rain falling in the distance without reaching you, and the half hour after a cell passes — washed air, wet stucco several tones darker and far more saturated, standing water reflecting a coloured sky, chamisa and sage beaded and glowing, and a low sun coming under a broken ceiling onto a pink escarpment. That last combination is the single best light this landscape produces and it happens only in the monsoon.
So if a cell goes through at six in August, do not pack. Wait.
Winter is mild by day, cold by night, and clear. Daytime temperatures in the low teens with a low midwinter sun near thirty-two degrees means the whole short day rakes the landscape, the air is at its clearest of the year, and snow on the mountains gives the pink sunset its most dramatic version. Snow on the valley floor is occasional and does not usually last. Sunset before five puts the mountain sequence in the late afternoon, which is convenient rather than otherwise.
Against winter: genuinely cold evenings at this altitude, which limits anything outdoors after dark to minutes, and the possibility of a storm closing the interstate, which is a travel problem for guests rather than a photographic one.
And one closing instruction that applies in every month. Scout the two positions — the one facing east at the range, and the one facing west at the valley — and make sure they are within a minute of each other. The whole photographic argument for this venue is twenty minutes long, it runs in two opposite directions, and it cannot be improvised.
More frames from The Hyatt Regency Tamaya
The Hyatt Regency Tamaya wedding photography: common questions
What needs establishing before anything else?
Where photography is permitted. The resort stands on land belonging to a sovereign Pueblo with its own government, laws and rules about photography — and those restrictions are serious rather than nominal: certain areas, buildings, activity and people may not be photographed at all, and permits may be required beyond ordinary guest use. Ask through the resort in writing, take the answer literally, and do not improvise beyond it. Cultural material is not decoration for a wedding portrait.
What is the defining light here?
The range to the east. Its west-facing escarpment is largely bare granite, so in the last minutes of the day the low sun strikes it directly and the whole face runs from grey to warm to orange and then to a deep rose-pink — which is where the range’s name comes from. That sequence takes about twenty minutes and the best of it lasts two or three, and everything in a wedding day here should be arranged around it.
How do you shoot it?
Turn round, and expose for the mountain rather than the couple. By the time the face is pink the valley floor is in shadow, so at any exposure holding the colour a face is unlit — the couple must be lit by you, with one small warmed source at low power, set up before the sequence rather than during it. And compress: at twenty-four millimetres a range ten or fifteen kilometres off is a band at the top of the frame, while at a hundred and thirty-five it fills the background as a wall of colour.
What do you do in the middle of the day?
Use the three things the property has. The cottonwood gallery along the river, which is the only real canopy for miles and casts solid shade if you are deep enough in. Any covered outdoor space — a portal, a colonnade, a deep overhang — which at this latitude is the best portrait light at any hour, because the roof removes the overhead sky and the light arrives horizontally. And the interiors. At this altitude in very dry air the shadows are nearly empty, so the range between a lit stucco wall and its own shadow is four or five stops.
Is there a best fortnight?
Yes, and it is the second half of October. The cottonwoods along the river turn a brilliant uniform gold and then drop quickly, and a gallery of gold cottonwood with a blue-grey range behind it and a deeply saturated sky above is a three-colour landscape with few equals. One logistical caution: the region hosts a very large hot-air balloon event in early October that fills accommodation across the area — and which also puts balloons over the valley at first light, which is a frame nowhere else offers. Check the dates.
What are the seasonal hazards?
Three. Spring wind, which is the least discussed: March through May brings sustained dry winds that lift dust and reduce visibility for hours or days, making a veil unmanageable and removing the mountain’s colour entirely. The July-to-September monsoon, which brings the year’s highest lightning density and needs a covered alternative with a known capacity — though it is also the most photogenic season, because the half hour after a cell passes gives washed air, wet stucco, standing water and a low sun onto a pink escarpment. And cold winter nights at this altitude, which limit anything outdoors after dark to minutes.
More New Mexico venue guides
We are writing a photographer’s guide to every venue we would happily shoot in New Mexico. Here are three more, plus the full index:
- The Santa Ana Star Casino, Bernalillo: Suits and Does Not Suit
- Bishop’s Lodge: A Season-by-Season Photography Guide
- The Eldorado Hotel: Working a Large Pueblo Revival Hotel
Planning a wedding at The Hyatt Regency Tamaya?
Settle the permissions, then scout two positions twenty minutes apart. Tell us your date.
