Lunchtime Photo

This is the Calvary Chapel of the Canyons located on Silverado Canyon Road. On its own it isn't an especially great looking church, and I long ago gave up on trying to take an ordinary shot of it.

But then, several months ago, I happened to be out in the area when I saw the church from a distance on an evening when the moon was lighting it up. This inspired me to try to take a picture of the church from about half a mile away, but I was never able to take a single image that satisfied me. So I decided to create a composite instead.

This is a very carefully constructed image. The base layer is a photo I took when the moon was full. The next layer is a picture I took with my phone on Monday night. It has lovely clouds and a sky full of stars. In the area around the moon, I made the layer semi-transparent so the moon was visible, and then brightened it up.

The final layer is the foreground hills. I took dozens of versions of this on different days, and then applied different effects to brighten up the area around the church. My Photoshop skills are not up to this, but I ended up liking this version better than any of the others.

Even though I'm not entirely satisfied with this, I'm posting it in order to get it off my plate. I do this sometimes when I've spent too much time trying to capture a perfect shot with no success, and the only way to stop myself is to put it on the blog so there's no point in trying any further. The result is worse photography for you but better mental health for me.