Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument

Winter break has traditionally been a time when I take a road trip in search of, well, winter.  That has always meant going to Colorado so I can see both nature and friends.  Unfortunately, thanks to COVID-19 I wasn't comfortable seeing any friends.  So I decided to head to New Mexico this year instead, where I know absolutely no one.

First stop: the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument east of Las Cruces.

As far as looking for winter goes, I was unsuccessful on this stop.  Temperatures were in the low 60s, with not a trace of snow to be seen.  The scenery, however, was still top notch.

Looking to the northwest, I loved the mountains in both the foreground and background and the interesting clouds in the sky.

If warning signs were placed everywhere people had died as a consequence of their bad decisions, the world would be pretty full of signs like this one.

After a 10-hour drive I arrived just in time for golden hour, so I got lots of long shadows and warm light.

Unexpected bonus -- moonrise over the mountains!

I couldn't find one spot where I had both a good shot of sunset to the west ...

... and the last light of day on the peaks to the east.  So I found myself awkwardly jogging my tripod back and forth between two spots about 100 feet apart.

The next morning I headed to the east side of the range for sunrise.  The "census-designated place" of White Sands, New Mexico -- population of roughly 1,500 -- was between me and that sunrise.

More warm tones and long shadows just after the sun's appearance.  And if this shot looks sharper than those from the previous day, that's likely because I noticed that my lens had been sent to manual focus rather than auto focus after I finished the previous day's shooting.  So every time I set a focal point and pushed my auto-focus button that afternoon, apparently nothing was actually happening.  I'm annoyed that I never noticed, and several good compositions turned out to be bad photos because the focus was so poor.  Fortunately, several shots were sharp enough to make the visit not a complete bust.

My only excuse is rust from being out of a regular shooting routine.  So I've forgotten basic steps like checking all my settings.  I would have been much more upset if I hadn't caught it until later in my trip!