Oil Patch Lights
Sometimes it's good to take a break from your photos and come back to them later. When I first looked through my shots from our Guadalupe Mountains trip I passed over this shot thinking it wasn't that great. However, now looking back on it, it achieves exactly what I set out for it to do. Show off what the oil production east of Guadalupe Mountains National Park has done to the night sky. My friends asked me what city that was when they first saw the lights. My response, "Oil Town". All I know is there were a lot fewer lights out there in 2009 when we were last there. And a LOT fewer vehicles on the roadway between Pecos and Carlsbad. In a long exposure you can still see a lot of the stars, but it's not quite as easy with the naked eye as it was at one time.