Clouds, Mountains, Moon

I love a dramatic sky with clouds.  Even better, I like a dramatic sky with clouds and something interesting, like the moon.  I took this photo while out hiking in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains on January 3rd.  I think this photo condenses down what is important to me about the West: open sky and mountains.  About the processing of the image: I increased the contrast, darkened the sky a bit, dodged the clouds to get them to pop out a bit more, and used a red filter to convert the image to black and white.  (I usually use a red filter with my film camera to darken skies and help highlight clouds, but I did not have a red filter with me, so I had to do this digitally.)  See more photos from that afternoon of Central New Mexico here (or click on the “Single Frame Central NM” link to the right).

Sandias, Moon, Sky, outside Albuquerque, NM