My scouting the previous afternoon had revealed the perfect place to shoot sunrise this morning. The afternoon light was nice, but with dawn just a short ways off, this place would soon explode with color and texture. I started hiking before there was any light and arrive with just enough time to set up the tripod, frame the scene, set the focus, and attach the cable release. As I look at the view through the camera, the clear sky feels a little bland. This is easily minimized, though, and once the sun hits the rocks, the warm glow and swirling colors will dominate the scene. Less than a minute now as the rosy glow on the horizon grows more intense. No time for second thoughts.

Doubt, however, rises with the sun. As the first rays spill over the eastern horizon, dark shadows mottle the colored rocks in front of me. The brightness of the foreground ruins the effect on the more distant sandstone. And that clear sky is clearly not going to work. The scene I am looking at is not the scene I imagined, and it will not yield an image that I care to print.

The light continues to deteriorate into bright flatness as I meander back to my pickup. I cross the area where I shot sunset yesterday. Being a west-facing slope, it is still in shadow…barely. The rounded features, the colored stripes, and the demarcating fractures look very different than they did last evening. I take out the camera and check compositions. There are possibilities here.

I frame the stone in what looks like the best possible way and click the shutter. I can’t say exactly why this scene appeals to me, though I am certain that the composition is better than the contrived scene I attempted to shoot earlier. When I finally see the slide several days later I will know it has happened again—I am crossing paths with light that wants to be photographed. It is not the picture I intended to take this morning. It is not the light I expected to see. But here it is, waiting patiently for me to come along, knowing that I would arrive, and looking its best when I did.

This rock is Navajo sandstone, ancient dunes that were eventually compressed into stone. Water and chemicals percolated through the stone to provide the different colors.