White Sands - November 2023

 

Last November my friend, Alan, and I made another attempt to photograph a full moon setting over White Sands National Park.  Our previous attempt, in April 2022, was a bust -- see my blog post about it here -- and we got skunked on this one too.  But there are always good pictures to be had at White Sands, and we were able to capture some on this trip, as you can see from the image above (and those below).

When we arrived in mid-afternoon, the sun was already getting low in the late November sky, casting long, deep shadows in the dunes . . .

. . . and revealing the delicate ripples in the sand:

There weren't many tourists this time of day (and this time of year), but two young Asian women were enjoying the views . . .

Clouds began to roll in, creating an early "blue hour" . . .

Through the clouds, we got a few crepuscular rays -- see image at the top of this blog.  Then it was time to head back to Alamogordo, eat dinner, and hit the hay for a very early wake-up call in the morning.

The park normally opens at 7:00am, but for a fee (to cover the ranger's overtime) a ranger will open the gate to early entry permit holders.  We got in a little before 6:00; sunrise was at 6:43am, moonset at 7:10am.  28 degrees, and thankfully no wind.  But it didn't look good.  Here's what the sky looked like toward the sun in the southeast at 6:21am . . . not great:

And here's what the sky looked like at 6:27am in the northwest where the moon was supposed to be setting . . . no chance!

The best we could hope for was some sunrise color in the southeast and a few seconds of direct sunlight through a gap in the clouds.  So we waited . . . 

In the meantime, we got some nice "blue hour" images . . .

And in the northwest, the moon was still obscured, but the clouds were getting interesting.

Finally, we began to see a little color in the southeast along with a few crepuscular rays:

Get ready!  Here it comes!

A three-minute burst of direct sunlight on the dunes . . .

. . . and then it was gone:

Time to pack up and go home.

If you would like to see these images in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!

Central New Mexico Mission Church Tour

 

Last October, my friend, Alan, and I (along with about ten other photographers) embarked on another one-day tour of old mission churches east and south of Albuquerque.  Most of the churches were repeats from the tour we took in May of 2022, so I won't re-present them to you in this post.  (You can read about that trip here.)

However, on this tour there were a few new (to me) churches -- and, en route, one iconic New Mexico abandoned house -- that I'll share in this post.

The iconic house is known as the "Sears House" because it is reputed to be a DIY house ordered from the Sears Roebuck catalog and built sometime in the early 1920s.  It's been photographed hundreds (if not thousands) of times, but my first visit happened in June of 2021 with my friend, Bruce, during the pandemic.  You can read about that trip here.

Photo from June 2021 trip

The house is on private property -- photographable from the road, but not accessible.  On this visit, however, our tour leader had arranged with the caretaker to allow us onto the property for a closer, 360-degree view . . . including from above with my drone.

You'll notice that the trees on the right and left of the house in the 2021 image above are no longer standing:

And, for visual interest, I converted a few of my images to black-and-white:

Moving on, we were also able to go inside some of the churches we had photographed only from the outside on our earlier tour, and found some beautiful religious icons and architecture.

This is the interior of the Our Lady of Sorrows in Manzano, built in 1829:

There are small statues in each of the window bays:

Close-up of the cherub at the feet of the Virgin of Guadalupe

And life-size statues around the altar area:

Here's the interior of the San Antonio church in Abeytas . . .

and a couple of its icons:

Next we stopped at a small abandoned chapel now on private property in the village of Tome:

Further up the road in Tome, we visited the Immaculate Conception church, notable for its wood trim.

Around the perimeter of the courtyard in front of the church were small cherubs and angels:

The next-to-last church we visited was Our Lady of Guadalupe church in Peralta, a town where one of the last skirmishes of the Civil War in New Mexico occurred on April 15, 1862.

Parishoners were beginning to arrive for the Saturday afternoon mass, but the greeter at the door let us in for a respectful quick and quiet look:

As the sun was sinking toward the horizon, the last stop on our tour was the historic mission church San Antonio de Los Lentes (Los Lentes was a small village that has been subsumed in the town of Los Lunas).  Built in 1790 and restored in 2017, the church has distinctive architecture and is incredibly photogenic.

Unlike the previous church (and most Roman Catholic churches), there was no Saturday afternoon mass here, and the gate was locked.  So we did the best we could from outside the wall.

Back out on the street, as we were packing up our gear and getting ready to head for home, a guy in a pickup drove by slowly, checking us out.  He stopped, leaned out the window, and asked us what we were doing.  Slightly anxious, we told him we had been photographing the church.  He said, "Would you like to go inside?".  Oh yeah!

He drove up the street, pulled into a driveway, and walked back to the church with keys.  He opened the gate . . .

                . . . and the front doors . . .

. . . went in and turned on the lights for us . . . Simple and beautiful!

If you would like to see these images in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!