Defeated and in Awe
The alarm rang at 5:00 a.m.
I wasn’t going to get up. I hesitated. Looked out the window of my Subaru. Clear skies. I laid my head back down on my lumpy pillow.
Closed my eyes.
...Damnit!
I opened them again. It only took a few seconds for that nagging voice to speak up—the one that remembers every time I missed a great moment because I was lazy. Reluctantly, I twisted my body through the back seat door and crawled outside.
The air was clear. Last night’s storm had dumped a decent amount of rain, but now the sky was a deep blue, with a few dozen stars still lingering. I rounded to the front of the car, pulled the keys from my pocket, and started her up.
My plan was to photograph Mesa Arch at sunrise. I had pictured the same scene as everyone else’s, only… better. My version would have better light—and a unique composition thousands of others had somehow missed. (Yeah... a bit ambitious, I know.) But as I drove up the plateau, I spotted wispy striations of cloud clinging low on the eastern horizon—the exact opposite of what I needed for the famous shot.
I knew right away: if I headed to Mesa Arch, I’d be walking into an overdone composition with flat, boring light. If I was going to get flat light anyway, I at least wanted it to be on something original. So when the turnoff came, I passed it.
A few miles later, I entered a strange little pocket of fog. Just for a couple hundred feet. Then it cleared again. Interesting. I wound my way back to the area I’d witnessed a disappointing sunset the day before. There, I had found a blooming Claret Cup cactus perched on the edge of a vast overlook. The La Sal Mountains towered in the distance, and the canyon stretched wide and open below.
That was the dream shot. Scarlet flowers lit by morning sun, a vast canyon dropping behind them, and a glowing sky above it all. But those clouds meant the light might not break through. Still, it was the only scene I knew in the area, and time was ticking.
About 10 minutes before sunrise, I was crouched tightly over the cactus when a wisp of fog floated through my composition. It caught the ambient glow. Beautiful. Fleeting. And I blew it—clunky setup, unbalanced frame. I fumbled. Nothing looked right. The composition was too tight, too chaotic, too distant, too messy. And just like that, the fog vanished.
Frustrated, I packed up and wandered the ledge, still hopeful I could find something. The canyon ledge was adorned with ancient junipers and desert flowers—there had to be something.
But everything I tried was off. Too wide. Too busy. Too far from the cliff. Not enough depth. Then, to cut deeper into my struggles, a radiant beam of sunlight shot across the belly of a cloud lingering about the distant peaks. The light was beginning to explode… and I had nothing.
I was frantically moving now. Trying one tree, then another. Trying to frame the canyon. The sun was about to crest. Nothing worked. I was missing it all.
Then I spotted a lower platform just off the edge of the plateau. I scrambled down 20 feet. A gnarled juniper curved around like a claw, perfectly framing the view. I set up fast. Composed. Took a few exposures.
Still not right! Egh! The light was beautiful but the canyon looked small. The frame wasn’t doing it justice. I bounced to another spot. The fog was thickening in places now—drifting and wrapping around cliffs and trees. Glowing. Haunting. Magical. I kept moving, trying different subjects, different angles.
Sunrise.
And I had nothing I was excited about.
I sat down on a sandstone slab, chest tight. Defeated and in awe all at once. The golden sun climbed above the La Sals bursting the dull red cliffs with vibrancy and life. The clouds, which had threatened to ruin the morning, now floated like watercolor across the sky. Fog spilled into the canyon in soft, glowing puffs. The rain-scented air was sweet and cool.
This was magic. Visceral. And I missed it. I failed to capture it—failed to do the one thing I was here to do.
But after a minute, I stood back up. "With all of this, there has to be something," I thought. "Even if it’s simple. Go simple. Forget the complex compositions. Forget trying to capture it all in one."
...Duh. Simplicity.
That was the answer all along.
I scrambled back up from the lower platform and found a clean, open view of the canyon. Nothing fancy—just the scene, as it was. I zoomed in to 105mm and stitched together a panorama. Just the land, the light, and the moment.
Simplicity.
And finally—finally—I captured something that felt right. A photograph I was proud of.
As the morning aged, it only got better. The fog thickened. The contrast deepened between gold sunlight and dark, looming clouds. And with a clear head and renewed perspective, I found several more images—some simple, some layered.
Landscape photography is hard. It humbles you. And sometimes, it tricks you into believing that complexity is the goal.
But sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is strip it all back and focus on what’s most important. In photography. In life.
