Hanging with the dead in Questa, NM
I don't usually go shoot at a cemetery - but in this case, it was hard to resist!
I was in Red River, New Mexico for a vacation with the family last summer, and of course just had to get out and shoot a bit. (Ok, a LOT.) But anyways, one thing that I wanted to shoot was the Wild Rivers Recreation Area outside of Questa, NM - basically, about a 30 minute drive from where we were staying. Close enough to squeeze in one afternoon!
So I headed out that way and did a fair bit of shooting, though my favorite part of that area was the road shots I was getting. With mountains in the background and amazing clouds overhead, it was hard to resist, and pretty easy to get some amazing photos. In fact, I wrote a blog post about the road shot, where I took the same photo but adjusted it with 8 different software packages, with lots of different results. Check that out and let me know what you think!
Anyways, once I was done there, I started heading back to Red River, and before I got very far I was upon this little church and cemetery, which are just outside of Questa. Actually, they are pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Questa was a couple of miles away.
So of course I stopped to pay my respects and once again, that amazing sky and mountains in the background just had me drooling. Coming from Texas, this is not stuff I get to see too often. So even though a cemetery and a fairly plain church may not be my usual subjects, I am a sucker for wicked clouds and looming mountains.
In some ways, this just screams "the old West" to me, as though it's something you would find on a wagon trail 200 years ago. Well, except for the paved road and that shop in Questa, of course!