One can’t live in or around Albuquerque without knowing about the Sandia Mountains; they occupy the entire Eastern horizon, tower above the city, and paint the dying evening sky with a remarkable light. This post will mostly be about my fascination with nature as a subject of the lens, but also a bit about my shooting and editing process and where I could stand to make improvements.

       Alright, first a little bit of honesty: this post was supposed to be either a video or a gif. The idea was that I would take a picture of the mountains from my driveway every day for a month, and then stitch it all together into a bit of a time lapse style thing. Seems pretty neat, and easy enough; go outside, take a picture, edit, call it a day. Except your boy has no concept of consistency. The only thing I can seem to keep in routine is drinking at least one cup of coffee in the morning, most of the time with cream, unless I forget to go to the grocery store. So, ta da! Two out of thirty pictures delivered way past when I took the first one. For h*ck’s sake one of the two is a snow scene! But I made an Excel sheet, so things are looking up.

       The Sandias are mostly what peaked my interest in nature photography in the first place. I remember one day in high school when I decided to play the part of an anxiety teen, I sat outside with my parent’s Nikon DSLR in the rain attempting to capture the lightening strikes behind and around the mountains. I didn’t get anything Net Geo worthy, took a whole bunch of out of focus under exposed pictures though, and had a great time doing it. I sat out there for at least an hour trying to press the button as soon as I thought there would be a strike. I fell in love with sitting in a single position, fixated on a single subject with only one thing on my mind. From there on out I would jump on any chance I could to document any aspect of the natural world around me. To be able to think about everything and nothing at the same time was incredible; I could sit in front of these mountains for ages without realizing any time had passed.

       These two photos came from my sweet little m50 with the 50mm Nikon lens I picked up from KEH cameras. In post I didn’t make a whole lot of changes, only some image sharpening and some contrast adjustments. I really was banking on a huge number of photos for this post, but I feel like my skills aren’t yet at a place that would meet my standards. Basically, I wouldn’t take 30 pictures I would feel comfortable posting. But alas, even the ‘character building’ images need to be presented every once in a while. I hope you’ve enjoyed what I’ve shown here, and I do plan on actually completing 30 days worth of Sandia pictures, so say tuned! -Ben