Red, White and Blue
Last weekend I took a trip to the Texas Hill Country to join a Meetup group of photographers that was going to do some night photography of a church in Crabapple, Texas. For those of you unfamiliar with MeetUp groups or Crabapple, Texas, I’ll explain.
According to Meetup’s website, ‘Meetup brings people together in thousands of cities to do more of what they want to do in life. It is organized around one simple idea: when we get together and do the things that matter to us, we’re at our best. And that’s what Meetup does. It brings people together to do, explore, teach and learn the things that help them come alive.’
I have gone out to a few Meetup photography events and found them to be a great way to bring photographers together. It serves as a way for newer photographers to learn tricks and tips from those more experienced and is usually focused around something interesting to photograph.
Crabapple, Texas is a tiny unincorporated town about 10 miles north of Fredericksburg, Texas and close to Enchanted Rock State Park. The only thing in ‘town’ is the church and an old school house that is on the historic register. I’ve been through Crabapple plenty of times during the day on my bicycle but had never really thought about going out there for a night shoot. Boy have I been missing out!
Our group was aiming to photograph the church with the Milky Way behind it. Our group’s organizer, Jeff Cohen, had done some research and found that with the new moon, the Milky Way would be over the church from sunset to about 11 PM. All we needed were some clear skies and those were predicted as well.
Heading out to Fredericksburg that afternoon the skies were still very cloudy and I was wondering if the weatherforecasters’ prediction was going to be a dud or not. They were calling for the skies to clear in the afternoon.
By 6 PM the skies were still pretty cloudy as we headed out from Fredericksburg to Crabapple. When we arrived and began to set up we were quickly joined by other photographers and the skies were beginning to clear as predicted.
I captured this shot about an hour after sunset as someone's taillights reflected off the church. Combined with the reflected lights off the clouds from the city lights in Fredericksburg, it made for an interesting view of the old church. I captured plenty of other images of the church that night, but this one definitely stands out in the group.
Photo by Steve Coyle Photography (www.stevecoylephotography.com)
