What A Year

A quiet mission church in New Mexico lit by the almost full moon.

After nearly 14 months away from this blog, I am digging it back up. So much has changed for me as a photographer in the last year. My trusty D5000 has been damaged, but not destroyed. I repaired it with cheap ebay parts, but it’s not the camera it used to be. That being said, it still takes pictures like it always has, but due to it’s handicaps, I have had to become a better photographer. I am pretty proud of myself and how I have developed personally and I’m excited to share some of my new work with you. I have given up on the spray and pray style of shooting that I used previously and have started planning shots and taking two or three good ones and moving on. While this doesn’t make for a good post everyday, I am aiming for several updates a month with fresh images. When inspiration is down, I plan to do some real world photography education for those that still follow this blog. As an incentive, I am giving you a recent shot from last week’s trip to Alamogordo, NM.

I saw this little mission church as I descended from Apache Peak towards Alamogordo and made my decision to explore it further on my return trip. I made it to town, finished my work, and started back towards Texas. I had been planning my shot since passing by earlier. It is western facing and would be lit up nicely by the setting sun. Unfortunately, the sun had already set and it was dark. The only light was a nearly full moon. I set my camera to 30 seconds just to see how much light would make it to the sensor. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw what I could of the image from the damaged screen. I shortened my exposure to 20 seconds to reduce the star-trailing and to add some contrast to the hillside. This really lit up the crosses in comparison to the hill. I made some minor adjustments in GIMP to bring the church building out and to reduce some of the noise in the sky, but that is all. I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you

Tagged: architecture, astro, church, d5000, exposure, GIMP, jtillmanphoto, light, long, mission, moon, nature, new mexico, night, nikon, NM, outdoors, peaceful, photo, photography, quiet, rural, tog, travel

Posted in: Astronomy, Daily Life, Long Exposure, Night Shots, Photography, Travel, Uncategorized, Work