Low-Light Shooting, Moonlight, and Trying Not to Get Eaten by Skinwalkers

Bring on the moonlight, long shutter speeds, manual focus, and a healthy amount of nighttime desert paranoia.

PHOTO JOURNAL 2026

James Bradley

7/23/202610 min read

Low-Light Shooting, Moonlight, and Trying Not to Get Eaten by Skinwalkers

Low-Light Shooting, Moonlight, and Trying Not to Get Eaten by Skinwalkers

My first experience with shooting in low-light was from the rim of the Rio Grande Gorge near Taos, New Mexico. Bring on the moonlight, long shutter speeds, manual focus, and squirming with a healthy amount of nighttime desert paranoia.

The story begins on the west rim of the Rio Grande Gorge at about 10:30 at night.

This was one of the coolest and most rewarding moments I have had since I started shooting again. It was also one of the creepier ones because I was standing out in the middle of the New Mexico desert by myself, in the dark, waiting and watching as the moon came up. This was amazing by itself, but thanks to one of my friends (Rick) I was trying to take pictures and also trying not to think too hard about skinwalkers sneaking up behind me. Skinwalkers? There is no such thing, right? Ya…ummm….we’ll go with that!

You know, normal photography stuff.

My subject for this shoot was the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. I got my inspiration for this photo from several fellow members of the High Desert Photography Club. Christopher Balmer, the owner of Yellowstone Camera, also had a shot of his vehicle which was kind of inspiring. The group and Mr. Balmer had shown me photos, in person as well as in an online class, of what they called “painting with the moon”. In the photos I saw that the subjects appeared to be under a light source of some sort. Each one had a starfield behind it as you see in my photo, but with no obvious light source, at least none visible to me and these photos almost looked to be lit up like daylight.

Needless to say I was intrigued.

What makes this photo for me is not the bridge itself. It was not lit by city lights, spotlights, or anything fancy. The light hitting the bridge was from the full moon. It still kind of blows my mind because that night it was dark enough that the autofocus didn’t want to play, but bright enough that the moon could still paint the bridge and landscape with just enough detail to make the shot work.

…and boy did it work! Up until this point it is one of my favorites.

This was taken with my Sony A7III, and it gave me the beginnings of an education in low-light photography. I already knew that everything that a camera does is based around light, or lack the roof in this case. It’s kind of a deep concept, I know. This was one of those situations where I really started understanding how much work the camera does when there is barely any light available.

So, I made a plan the day before to go find out if I could actually make it work. I left the hotel in Santa Fe, and drove the hour and a half up to the gorge so I could get in position before it got completely dark. I was there about 45 minutes before moonrise. This part mattered a lot, because once the sun went down, the camera would not lock focus on anything. There was not even close to enough contrast or light for autofocus to grab onto. Imagine that, dark outside and the camera cannot see anything. Some lessons are learned the hard way I suppose. So, before dark, I focused on the bridge while the camera could still see it.

This is where things got interesting. I stood there in the dark with the camera rotated east and waiting for the moon to come up. I watched it and shot quite a few shots. The ISO was up too high so all I got was blur and noise. High ISO adds light, right? GRRRRR!!!! I decided to watch the moonrise and not worry about the shot for a bit. It was spectacular.

Here’s hoping it’ll work. I rotated the camera back to the bridge and looked through the viewfinder and pressed the shutter release. Once the first few shots were taken I moved the switch to the gallery mode in camera so I could see if any that had been taken were what I was looking for. Well, crap! No, just a big purple (I believe this ring is called aberration) ring with no bridge. I tried again. Same thing, no luck. My frustration was almost to boiling point and I was about to pack it up and go back to the hotel defeated when I heard Susan’s voice in my head. “You need to be a bit more patient and think about it”, she said. So, I did just that. I stopped and thought about it and I remembered that I needed to switch my camera to manual focus mode for it to actually take the shot. I mean it makes sense, right? I switched it over, snapped a few shots, looked at the gallery and…you guessed it….I had the first of my moon painted shots of the bridge. I was so excited I almost peed!

Skinwalkers be damned! I had done it!

This was one of those little lessons that sounds obvious after the fact, but only because I had already almost messed it up. Autofocus is great until it is not. In the dark, the camera turns into a confused little robot that will keep searching and searching as I stand there cussing at it, like that is going to help.

For this shot I was using my Sony A7III with the 24-70mm f/2.8 lens on my Manfrotto tripod. For long exposure shooting a tripod is almost a must because it is next to impossible to keep shake out of the shot when you shoot handheld. With these shots I was working with shutter speeds anywhere from about 4 seconds to 25 seconds and there was no way I was going to do handheld shots without turning the whole thing into a blurry mess because these are really long shutter times for shooting handheld. I had also intended to use a wired remote shutter so I did not have to touch the camera when taking the photo, but my old ass forgot it (senility is real). It wasn’t gonna help me at all when it was in Idaho and I was not! Even pressing the shutter button can cause a little shake during a long exposure, so the remote would have helped keep the camera steady while the shutter was open. Instead, I set the cameras internal shot timer to a two second release so I could push the shutter button, take my hands off, and wait for the shutter actuation.


The aperture was at f/2.8, wide open which means the lens was letting in as much light as it could. In low-light photography, this matters a lot. When there isn’t much light to work with, opening the aperture gives the camera the best chance to collect as much light as available.

I had the ISO set around 3200, if I remember correctly. It may have been more. ISO is basically the camera’s sensitivity to light. Raising the ISO helps brighten the image when it is dark, but it also adds noise, which can ruin the image and has ruined many of mine. That grainy look can show up fast if the ISO gets too high. With this shot, ISO 3200 (I think) gave me enough brightness to work with without completely wrecking the image. It was not perfect, but it was usable.

I’ll call it a win.

The shutter speed was the big player here. A longer shutter speed lets more light hit the sensor, which is why the stars, bridge, and canyon area showed up at all. But longer shutter speeds also record movement. That is where the streak of light across the bridge came from. A car drove across during the exposure, and the headlights stretched into that bright line.

That is one of the fun parts of long exposure photography. Moving lights become trails. The bridge stayed still (like bridges will do), the stars stayed mostly sharp, and the headlights turned into a glowing line across the frame. I did not paint that in. That is what the camera recorded during the exposure.

The starfield is also real. That is what I actually shot. I was not trying to fake a night sky or make some over-the-top fantasy edit. I do not have the skills to do that at this point in my editing career. I wanted the shot to show what it felt like that night: cool, quiet, dark, wide open, bright enough from the moon to make everything feel a little unreal.

Fast forward to a few months later, I got to take some of what I learned from this Rio Grande Gorge shoot and use it again closer to home. Susan and I decided to have a date night and go out to Market Lake for my second moonlit night shoot and her first. This time I was not just guessing my way through it while my mind worried about things that go (insert Skinwalker noise here) in the night. I actually had enough of a clue to explain the process to her (maybe). This was kind of a cool moment because it is not very often that I know more about any subject than Soogle does! I love you dear!

This does not mean I was an expert. Let’s not get carried away here, but I’d learned enough from standing out in the New Mexico desert, fighting autofocus, testing shutter speeds, and being paranoid about skinwalkers (thanks again Rick), that I could maybe walk her through the basics.

We’d see soon enough.

I think we went to the Market Lake shoot as ready as we could both be. I was using my Sony A7III with the Viltrox 16mm (autofocus lens). Susan was shooting with the Sony A6000 and the 12mm (manual focus) Brightin Star lens. Both setups were wide-angle, which made sense for the kind of shots we were trying to get. With night sky photos, a wider lens helps because it lets you capture more of the scene, more of the sky, and more of the surrounding landscape. They are wide angle lenses…right?

This was also another reminder that night photography is not just about pointing the camera at the stars and hoping for the amazing shots I have seen from other photographers. A lot going on. I have to think about focus, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, tripod stability, and what kind of light is actually hitting the scene. The moon can be a huge help, but it can also create its own problems if I’m not paying attention.

I believe that the single biggest thing I was able to communicate to Susan was the importance of getting focus figured out before it gets too dark. Just like the bridge shot in New Mexico, once the light is gone, autofocus starts having a bad day. In her case, since she was using a manual focus lens, it was less of an issue since she would have to get it all set up before the shooting started. I basically explained the concept of how autofocus is supposed to work. It wants contrast, edges, light, and something obvious to grab onto. In the dark, it usually just hunts around indefinitely like Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs Bunny. We were looking for proper exposure, not rabbits. So, getting the focus set early or learning how to manually focus becomes a pretty big deal. As I said earlier, I almost scrapped the whole bridge shoot because I forgot to autofocus. I am sure glad she’s in my head all the time.

Thanks Dear!

We also worked through shutter speed again. Longer shutter speeds let in more light, which is what makes the stars and foreground show up. But if the shutter is open too long, the stars start to stretch instead of staying sharp. This is one of those things that sounds simple until you are standing outside in the dark trying to remember what settings you used last time. She already had a good idea of how it works, but with most of her experience being with a faster shutter for wildlife shots, the switch to slower shutter speed was a big change for her.

The Market Lake shoot also gave us a good example of lens quirks. One of Susan’s shots had a big purple ring in it (aberration), which looked pretty wild. That kind of thing can happen with certain lenses, especially when shooting bright light sources, moonlight, or strong contrast at night. It is usually some kind of lens flare, reflection, or aberration caused by light bouncing around inside the lens. I talked a bit about this earlier. I think in the case of the A7iii it was because I had the camera in crop sensor mode. I may be wrong. This is still pretty new to me. Fancy words aside, it basically means the lens caught light in a way we did not want or one of the settings were wrong.

At first, something like this feels like the camera or lens ruined the shot. But honestly, those mistakes are part of how I learn. The purple ring became a useful example. It showed us how different lenses and camera bodies behave (full frame vs. crop sensor), how light can bounce around in weird ways, and how night photography has its own set of problems that don’t show up during the day because…well…its daylight.

My grasp of the obvious baffles me some days!

What I liked most about the Market Lake shoot was that it showed progress for both Susan and I. We got out, learned some new things, and moved around. The New Mexico shoot was an object lesson for me. I had to figure things out in real time. The Market Lake shoot was me taking that lesson, bringing it home, and helping Susan (and myself) work through the same process. Both were most definitely in the win column!

It also reminded me that photography is not just one big lesson. It is a pile of smaller lessons stacked on top of each other. Focus before dark. Use a tripod. Use a remote shutter if possible. If not, use the timer in camera. Open the aperture. Watch the ISO. Test and vary the shutter speed to see different results. Watch for weird lens flare. Try again. Mutter a little. Adjust something. Try again.

That is the part of this whole challenge of photography and I enjoy it more and more every day. Every shoot teaches me something, even when it does not go perfectly. It rarely does, but more often than not, lesson comes from a photo that works (or not). Sometimes it comes from me taking the time to teach, which reinforces what I have learned. Sometimes it comes from the photo with the giant purple ring in the middle of it. Who knows?

Either way, I am learning. And that is kind of the whole point.

I would love to get some feedback from you all about the photography learning process. Please feel free to shoot me an email through my contact page.


Thanks for reading!