Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe — Intricate Explorer

This is a shortie adventure, because it wasn’t supposed to happen.

I felt like I couldn’t leave Guadalajara without including at least ONE church, as the place is quite literally the City of God. (Not really, but that’s a good movie.)

This shoot was at Santuario de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe church, which is a goddamn mouthful to say. To be honest, we didn’t have the place on our list. We had an hour to kill before we could get into a tour at Museo Panteon de Belen, and we ended up here.

But don’t let that “side talk” deter you. This place wasn’t a joke. From the outside, it looked decent- like a standard church. But then you stroll in, and everything starts to unfold around you. Some kind of holy ghost transports you to another realm, and all of a sudden you’re in pure architecture bliss. It was absolutely breathtaking... The colors, lighting, and curves had to be created by some kind of God.

Then I realized it’s always the adventures you never expect to go on that end up having the craziest stuff.

Sure, it wasn’t the “biggest” church in Guadalajara, not by a longshot. But it was the best I’d seen. It also didn’t hurt that the place was basically empty, because the “famous” church (Guadalajara Cathedral) was a few blocks down the road.

After doing a circle around the inside, I decided I wanted a shot of the ceiling- wide angle style. I went to the main section, looked straight up, and aligned my camera:

**“Altar Naranja”**
*Taken on* *Sony a7rIII* + *Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8*
[ISO 1250 ~ 17mm ~ f/7.1 ~ 1/100s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)

I love this shot because it looks like some kind of alien gate to another dimension. Which is technically the goal of a church if you think about it.

The thing about church photography is that everything has to be perfectly lined up… Which can be easy to mess up if you’re not careful. If things aren’t ABSOLUTELY symmetrical, the viewer of the photo WILL notice. Maybe not consciously, but definitely subconsciously. You’ll notice this when editing. When you finally get everything perfect, it will “click,” and go from an “OK” photo to an absolute stunner. LINE THINGS UP.

Here’s some tips on how to go full OCD. Look at the edges, then look again. Make mental pinpoints, then make sure they match evenly on both sides. Do this with multiple points, in each direction. It helps to load up a grid on your camera screen. The good thing is you can always fix perspective in Lightroom/Photoshop if you’re a tad off.

From there, I stepped back and took a straight on view of the main aisle, seats, and altar. Here’s the shot I got: