God-Given Light

Spent last week photographing around north-central Arizona for the first time in a while.  An old friend of mine from school days back east teaches art at a private school in Massachusetts, and got himself a sabbatical for the spring semester to come out west for a couple of workshops and some free time to paint.  I figured that was also a good excuse for me to get away for a while and show him around the area.  So, he was busy doing his plein air oil studies while I wandered around and tried to find some new and interesting perspectives, which gets harder having been here quite a few times.

My shot here is at the Little Colorado River Gorge; honestly one of those dumb-luck, fortuitous moments that can't be planned... end of the day, we drove out the east entrance of the Grand Canyon a little early, thinking that the light was done for the day.  We just happened to see a turnout off the road to Cameron where the Navajo set up some stalls to sell jewelry and stuff... and being kind of tired, I probably would have passed it by, but my friend  wanted to stop and see where a dirt road behind the stalls led to, so we garnered up some energy to walk down there and voila!.. wow.  What can you say when an unexpected scene like this just pops up right in front of you?  This is nature's gift right here... all I had to do was be in the right place at the right time as the clouds opened up to light the gorge.  Thankfully I had the sense to bring my camera along for the walk!  The rest of the ride home to Flagstaff was one wow moment after the other,... but that is all huge, open country with no particular subject for a photograph, so we just had to enjoy the distant views, driving along as the sun set behind us, lighting up everything under the dark clouds off to the east.