The Streets of Laredo

Jun 15

Nestled in a quiet corner of Kent lies the Wild West town of Laredo

This town has been built, and is maintained, by a highly skilled group of enthusiasts, and just occasionally ordinary members of the public, (like me), get the chance to visit the location

This was thanks to a photography event organised by Timeline Events, who specialise in great locations all across the Uk

Brief History

The town was founded in 1971 by John Truder and friends
Based on the American Wild West of 1865 to 1889, the key is authenticity rather than a romanticised Hollywood version
Everything has been hand built and crafted by members of the Laredo Wild West Club, and the attention to detail is extraordinary

Laredo has been used on many occasions for Filming, TV Advertising, and music videos
The list of credits is very long and includes a great episode of Red Dwarf , ‘Gunmen of the Apocalypse’

For more information visit … Laredo Town

The Shoot

The town itself looks great and is very photogenic. In addition , there were around 20 members of the Laredo Club in period costume

I began by shooting a few portraits using a 135mm lens at f1.8, and although I was happy with the shots, I felt that it would be better not to blur out the background too much, and some enviromental shots including the surroundings would work better.

As I had decided not to take any additional lighting, I took portraits indoors, and in soft shade as much as possible. It was a gorgeous afternoon with some high wispy clouds which helped to diffuse the harsh afternoon sun, but not enough to take shots in full sunlight without some lights to soften the shadows

For shooting street scenes and wide interiors I switched over to a 24-70mm f2.8 lens

This was perfect for shots of card players and people at the bar

It was also really good for external shots , and I tried to keep the sun behind me to avoid a washed out sky

Street scenes worked well with a lens at 24mm

Shooting with the sun behind me as much as possible gave some gorgeous dark skies when converting to monochrome. I took down the brightness of the blue tones in the edit to create a moodier sky

Altering the preview on the camera to monochrome was useful to be able to see a B&W version of the image. As long as you’re shooting in Raw, the image file retains all the colour information which can be recovered while editing

Editing

I didn’t want to do much editing other than to convert some images to black and white, and others to have a faded grainy sepia look

Playing around with sliders in Lightroom I created a couple of presets preset that I liked that I felt suited the location

As with all presets, they don’t work for all images, but can be used as a starting point to get you close to the look you’re after

The presets are available to download (free)

The basic changes to create the preset were …
Reduce highlights
Reduce shadows
Increase clarity
Increase grain
Reduce saturation
Reduce vibrance
Add a slight vignette

Lightroom Presets (xmp files)

Download Wild West Preset 1
Download Wild West Preset 2