Arizona has some of the most amazing sunsets you will ever see. I am almost ashamed to say that after having lived in Arizona for just over 20 years it gets easy to sort of take them for granted. After moving back “home” to the Pacific Northwest, those Arizona sunsets are something that I am sort of missing. While the northwest can have nice sunsets, they typically aren’t those “fire in the sky” sort of sunsets that you see in Arizona.
I found myself in Oregon for a few days last week for work. My job took to to Eugene and I decided to make a side trip out by the coast on the way home. My biggest goal of the trip was to stop by and see Thor’s Well, I have seen tons of images from there, but have never witnessed it myself. Unfortunately when I arrived at the area of Thor’s Well, it was pouring down rain, rain that would rival an Arizona monsoon downpour. Needless to say, I stayed in the car and continued north towards home.
It really was just dumb luck that I found myself in this exact location for the sunset. I would love to say that I planned to have a nice still bay for a reflection and a tree line that makes a nice “arrow” to point right at the setting sun, but sometimes you just get really lucky and end up in the right place at just the right time, this was one of those times.
Another thing that might surprise people about this image is that I only shot it ONCE. I knew that I nailed the shot that I wanted and spent the rest of the time simply enjoying the sunset with the 6 or so other cars that were pulled over on the side of the highway enjoying it with me. It was tempting to keep firing away and get dozens of shots of the sunset, but I would have missed witnessing this and chatting with the drivers of those other cars. I guess the moral of this is that if you keep your eye glued to your viewfinder you really can miss some amazing things. As much as making a great image is important to me, seeing the world through a viewfinder can be very limited. Put your camera down at times and simply enjoy the magic that is around us each and every day.