In mid-September, I found myself with a quiet shift on a clear, cool night.

I had been working on photographing the Milky Way galaxy and refining my technique. The Milky Way is not easily seen by eye unless you are far away from city lights, and even then it appears as a ghostly cloud of stars that arch across the sky. For modern cameras however, the task of capturing the stars and gasses that make up our branch of the universe has become easier with larger and more sensitive image sensors.

The average exposure that I used to take these photos of the Milky Way over the Grassy Hill Congregational Church in Lyme was roughly 15 seconds.

I arrived around sunset and waited for it to get dark enough to photograph. Also, I was pushing an 8:30 p.m. deadline. I could tell that I was getting the photos that I wanted as deadline neared, so I began to get playful - which is easy to do when you are inspired by a sky full of stars.

I started thinking about other available light sources to create different visual effects. There was not much to work with, so I grabbed my cellphone, which has the silly flashlight app on it, and figured "what the heck, give it a try." 

I tripped the shutter on my camera, walked 10 to 20 feet towards the church and hit the app until I heard the shutter close. The cellphone's light appears bright when you are up close, but I could not believe my eyes when I looked at the image on the back of my camera. I had lit up the entire church.

So here I have posted a before-and-after of the church with and without the light from my cellphone. In the end, I submitted a different photo for composition reasons, but I now know than if I am in a pinch for light, my cellphone, of all things, may suffice.