Many cameras ago, I started learning photography because I wanted to capture the night sky the way my eyes could see it.
That was the whole thing at first. I wanted to photograph stars. I wanted to hold onto that feeling of standing under a sky so big it makes you feel small in the best possible way. I wanted the camera to see what I saw — the shimmer, the depth, the quiet wonder of it all. The kind of sky that makes you stop talking for a minute because words feel too clumsy.
Years later, after more practice, more mistakes, more learning, and more failed attempts than I can count, I found myself alone at Hartman Rocks in Gunnison, Colorado, trying again.
It was my final night there.
The Milky Way had not exactly been cooperating with my schedule. I had been watching the clouds, waiting for the moon to set, waiting for the sky to line up just right. It took three tries. Not three quick little tries from the comfort of a warm porch, either. Three actual attempts, where the timing, the weather, the clouds, and the sky all had to work together.
By the third try, it was around four in the morning.
And it was cold.
Cold in a way I did not appreciate for June. Cold enough that Penelope was back at the cabin at the campground, where she belonged, because there was no sense in making a pug suffer through my dramatic little star-chasing mission. She was probably warm, annoyed, and completely uninterested in the spiritual importance of astrophotography.
Meanwhile, I was standing out there in the dark and wind, trying to convince myself I was not going to freeze before I got the shot.
But the sky.
The sky was worth it.
There were stars everywhere, scattered like glitter across the horizon. I love glitter and sparkle anyway, so seeing the night sky that bright felt almost unreal. The Milky Way was visible to the naked eye, stretched over the Rocky Mountains in a way I had never been able to see at home. The Milky Way over Missouri is beautiful, but the Milky Way over the mountains is something else entirely.
It felt bigger there.
Cleaner somehow.
Like the sky had stepped closer.
Psalm 19:1 says:
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.”
That verse feels obvious for a Milky Way photo, but sometimes obvious is obvious because it is true.
I was not just looking at stars.
I was looking at God’s handiwork.
When I was growing up, a friend of mine used to say, “He sure does paint beautiful pictures, doesn’t He?” We would be on the way to school, still young enough that the world felt half magical anyway, and some sunrise would spread across the sky in pinks and oranges and gold. She would say that, and it always stuck with me.
He sure does paint beautiful pictures.
Standing alone in the cold at Hartman Rocks, all these years later, I thought about that same truth. Different sky. Different season of life. Different version of me standing under it. But the same God, still painting.
Only this time, it was not a sunrise on the way to school.
It was a whole galaxy stretched above the mountains.
I wish I could say the emotional moment happened right there, while I was standing under the stars. In some ways, it did. There was awe there. There was stillness. There was that strange feeling of being completely alone and not alone at all.
But the moment that really got me came later, back at the cabin.
I was cold, tired, and probably half-thawed by then, looking through the photos I had taken. And then I saw it.
I had finally gotten the shot.
Not a perfect shot, maybe. I am always learning. I am always seeing what I could do better, what I could try differently next time, what detail I missed or what choice I would make now. That is part of being a photographer. You never really arrive, and honestly, I hope I never do. I want to keep learning. I want to keep growing. I want to keep training my eyes to notice what God puts in front of me.
But still.
I got it.
The shot I had spent years learning to take.
There are moments in life that feel like a circle closing, but not a door shutting. This was one of those. It felt like a full-circle moment, but not the end of the journey. It was not “there, I did it, I am done.” It was more like, “Look how far God has brought me. Now keep going.”
Philippians 3:13–14 says:
“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
I like that Paul says he has not apprehended. He has not arrived. He is still reaching. Still pressing. Still moving forward.
That is how I feel about photography, and honestly, about faith too.
Every time I think I have learned something, God shows me there is more. More patience. More humility. More attention. More beauty in the small things. More courage to try again after failing. More willingness to stand in the cold and wait for the sky to clear.
Sometimes we want the big moment so badly that we forget the years it took to become the kind of person who could receive it.
This photo did not happen only at four in the morning in Colorado. It happened through years of paying attention. Years of messing up. Years of picking up the camera again. Years of chasing beauty because I needed to remember it still existed. Years of letting photography teach me how to look instead of just rush past everything.
Proverbs 1:5 says:
“A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels.”
There is no shame in still learning.
There is no shame in needing another try.
There is no shame in not getting it right the first night, or the second night, or the tenth year.
Sometimes the lesson is not just in finally getting the shot. Sometimes the lesson is in becoming the person who keeps showing up for it.
And that is where photography keeps helping me spiritually. Picking up the camera makes me look closer. It pulls me out of my own head and puts my attention back on what is in front of me. A sunrise. A flower. A bend in the road. A dog in the passenger seat. A reflection on water. A galaxy over the mountains.
I fail at noticing. Often.
I get busy. I get overwhelmed. I get stuck in my own thoughts. I forget to look for the small details. I forget that God is still showing His handiwork in places I might miss if I move too fast.
But the camera helps me return to that practice.
Look again.
Wait a little longer.
Pay attention.
There is beauty here too.
Psalm 8:3–4 says:
“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?”
That is the kind of thought that hits differently under a sky full of stars.
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?
What am I, standing out here in the cold with a camera and numb fingers and a stubborn little dream, that God would be mindful of me?
And yet He is.
The same God who stretched the stars across the sky also cares about the small, ordinary, personal things. The learning. The longing. The quiet goals nobody else fully understands. The little full-circle moments that feel silly to explain but sacred to live.
That night at Hartman Rocks mattered to me.
Not because I became some grand master of the night sky. Not because the photo marked the end of the road. But because, for one cold, windy, glitter-covered Colorado morning, I got to stand beneath the heavens and see years of learning meet one moment of wonder.
And back at the cabin, when I saw the image on my screen, I felt it.
Gratitude.
Awe.
Relief.
Joy.
The kind that comes when something you have carried for a long time finally finds its place.
I still have so much to learn. In photography. In faith. In patience. In seeing. In trusting God’s timing instead of trying to force my own.
But maybe that is part of the gift.
The heavens declare the glory of God, and we spend our lives learning how to notice.
