We had a lot of storm activity last week in Utah. Winter is still attempting to hold its icy cold grip. For that reason, I didn’t go out on an adventure. Instead, I stayed home and worked on projects around the house. While I was in my backyard shed workshop, I needed a tool from the garage. Walking through the yard, I noticed a break in the clouds to the west. It was about 6:00pm and I thought, if the sun sinks into that gap, there could be quite a display of beautiful light. I tried to ignore the pending sunset and continue with my woodworking. Back and forth to the garage I went. As the sun set lower, the light began breaking through the clouds. It was a clean bright light, and it was gaining in rich warm color. When I looked at my watch again, it was 6:05 and I knew the sun would set at about 6:25 (this was before daylight savings time started). I calculated that if I grabbed my camera gear and ran for the car, I could be on a hill overlooking the City of Orem in 10 minutes. That would give me about 5 minutes to set up my tripod, mount my camera, attach a neutral density grad filter and quickly adjust my camera settings. I almost hesitated and didn’t do it. But the light kept getting better and better. It was a split-second decision, and I was running for the car. In my haste to set up the camera I grabbed a different filter than the one I intended. I normally use a soft edge ND grad filter because it has a softer (and safer) transition line between filtered/unfiltered. Instead, I put on a hard edge grad, which I almost never use, thinking it was best saved for a virtually flat horizon, like at the beach. Once I realized my mistake afterwards, I feared my photos would be ruined by a harsh transition line. I was surprisingly pleased with the outcome of the above image. Some of my best images come as the result of serendipity, stupid mistakes, thinking outside the box, or simply not thinking. The image above is the first of the series of images I made that evening. The light progressively diminished with each shutter click after that. I’m happy I made the decision to go, I’m happy I was rushed past the point of being analytical and made a filter choice I wouldn’t otherwise have made, and I’m happy to have witnessed such a spectacular sunset on a quiet Saturday evening in early March.

I’ll have more to share next week. We drove to southern California for a few days to see the wildflowers progressing. We spent one night in Joshua Tree National Park and one night in Anza-Borrego State Park. Yesterday we drove through the town of Lake Elsinore and saw the hillsides of poppies for mile after mile. I may break that trip up over several posts because I have lots of images to share and I would rather take the time write about each one individually.