This image is a composite of two original negatives. Yes, I said negatives! I created this image many, many years ago but I still love it. I lived in Tucson, AZ at the time I made this and I would ofen drive around out in the desert, in the middle of the night when there were lightening storms to be photographed (something I can't really afford to do now that I am the mother of young children). Anyway, this particular night I drove out to Mission San Xavier Del Bac. This mission was originally constructed in 1692 and is an architechtural masterpeice. I had been hoping for an occasion to photograph the building and that beautiful, lightening filled night gave it to me! I rove out to the mission and set my tripod up in the muddy, puddle filled parking lot across the street. The display of lightening was phenominal and I enjoyed every minute of watching the big, puffy clouds that were stacked up behind the mission, as they were illuminated from within. I was so pleased with the images that came from this night that scanned them in to see what I could create. In those days, I was very new to Photoshop (although I was helping to create a digital dept. at Centric Photo, where I worked at the time and my home away from home). This peice is a composite of two images. The base image is of the mission, the clouds and the streaking stars. The second is the streaks of lightening. I did capture the lightening on the same night but this particular flash was in another frame, over to the side. After combining the images, I ran a watercolor filter over the piece, because, really, that's about all I knew how to do back then and I really liked the effect. I hope you enjoy this blast from my artistic past!