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I drove all day from Death Valley to Monument Valley chasing storms in fall of 2021. Got completely skunked, lightning-wise, but at the very last minute the sun broke through the clouds for about 5 minutes before setting and threw the towers into this stunning alpenglow, with a little rainbow on the far left.
For the record, the colors in the RAW image are just about this bright. I haven't artificially torqued up the saturation. It was a really stunning few minutes.
Well, this seems to be a popular picture! Thanks for all the love, people. I'll add it to my print offerings once I get online ordering set up on my site. See next post for a story about almost leaving just before this light happened.
Funny story behind this shot: the light had faded and it was obvious from the radar that there wouldn't be any more lightning in this storm, so I packed up to leave for a campsite on the San Juan River near Mexican Hat Rock. I made a last minute decision to splurge and stay at the hotel there at the Tribal Park and maybe do some night/dawn photography. I was at the front desk when I looked out and saw the light pop out and hit the towers. I dashed out and shot for a few minutes until it waned.
(And then the hotel's computer system went down and they had no manual fallback, so I couldn't check in. I went to camp on the San Juan anyway, which was lovely.)
In four days of storm chasing and 1500 miles of driving, this was the only really good shot I came home with.
Dang, now if I could only get this many likes on dating apps...