Photographer Mel Stone: the art of getting the shot; gallery to re-open Saturdays

Another image from Valley Drive (about half a mile north of Picacho). Saw this scene on Thanksgiving day and went back several times until I got the image I wanted: New Mexico and chiles. By the way, it was several years later that I learned to spell chile the New Mexico way.

Photographs by Mel Stone

This image was made Martin Luther King Day, 2011 – I remember the date because I brought a visitor out to White Sands and found out it was free admission because of the holiday. The place was overrun with people. I went walking to the east to find pristine dunes. I turned around and saw the back-lite dunes and just a scattering of clouds and made the shot. Some people say it reminds them of a nude.

Photographs by Mel Stone

Quite a few years after shooting ‘Organ Sunset,’ I revisited my favorite dead tree... a few more branches gone, but still photogenic. When I showed up, there was another photographer on the scene, but when the sun set, he left; I didn't. Then, the mountains and sky turned purple. Needless to say, I got the shot, he didn’t.

Photograph by Mel Stone

This was taken on a Sunday morning at the Doña Ana County Fairgrounds. The workers started to exercise the “rough stock” inside the pavilion, a terrible place to shoot because of the dark insides and open, bright walls or sides. But I was able to climb up by the announcers’ booth and avoid that bad light. I dubbed this "Indomitos" (untamed) only to be told by a Spanish expert you'd never call a horse indomito. Too late.

Photograph by Mel Stone

Las Cruces photographer Mel Stone

Photo by David Shaw

When I moved to Las Cruces (spring of 2010), each evening, if conditions looked favorable (a few clouds over the mountains and quite clear for the setting sun in the west), I'd drive over to Mesilla where this beautiful, dead tree stood on the edge of a field. After I got this shot I didn't go back for quite some time. Without clouds, the sky just goes on forever... the clouds add some dimension.

Photograph by Mel Stone

On a snowy, icy Saturday, I headed out on Dripping Springs Road to one of my favorite spots and took a photograph of the snow-capped Organs. I shot and processed the file in color, then decided to look at a black and white conversion.

Photograph by Mel Stone

I pre-visualized this White Sands shot and only had to walk a few feet off the road to get it.

Photograph by Mel Stone

I love driving on North Valley looking for photographs; there's one horse ranch I stop at. There are a couple of issues: The horses may be merely grazing, not an especially compelling image; or, the horses may be attracted to me and hang around too closely, again, not a compelling image. On this day, the horse wandered over and was too close; but, then, some noise west of us caught its attention; that pose I liked.

Photograph by Mel Stone

In my first years here, I drove to White Sands quite frequently. This image was taken just as the sun was rising. Looking west, the low rays really set-off the ridges in the drifted gypsum. I like to get away from the footprints and other blemishes on the dunes, so I walk way back in.

Photograph by Mel Stone

Posted Friday, May 22, 2020 3:44 am

By Mike Cook

Photographer Mel Stone was born in farmhouse outside Solway, Minnesota. He came to Las Cruces in 2010 and opened Mesquite Art Gallery in a remodeled 1898 adobe on Mesquite Street in the Mesquite Historic District.
Stone has a BA in chemistry from St. Olaf College, an MA in economics and mathematics from the University of North Dakota and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Colorado Bolder.
“I taught at the university level for a few years, then got bit by the TV news bug,” Stone said.
For about 30 years, he was “a one-man band TV news guy (photographer, reporter, writer and editor), which was pretty serious work,” Stone said. “My first, serious still photography was chasing butterflies around northern prairies.”
Stone bought his first digital camera and high-quality inkjet printer in 2005 and now carries a Fujifilm X-2 in a holster with a 50-200 mm lens and an X-t3 with 18-55 mm lens on a strap around his neck.
Now 77, Stone sells his work at the Las Cruces Farmers and Crafts Market and his gallery at 340 N. Mesquite St., which also features the works of other artists.
Six of his photographs are featured in the book “Seeing In Sixes, 2019, published by Lenswork.
Stone re-opened his gallery on Saturday, May 16. Current hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Saturday hours likely will change, he said, when the downtown Las Cruces Farmers and Crafts Market re-opens. Text Stone at 575-640-3502 to make sure the gallery is open before you visit.
For more information, visit www.melstonephotography.com and www.mesquiteartgallery.com.

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Mel Stone, photography

Photographer Mel Stone: the art of getting the shot; gallery to re-open Saturdays

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