Afterburn

I had already given up on the evening. We’d driven over specifically for the sunset, worked the petrified dunes, and I’d shot what there was and packed the bag thinking the sky had underdelivered. It wasn’t until we were most of the way back to the car that it started to move, and by the time we reached the road it was doing this.

We hurried across into the Lower Galoot area, where black lava takes over from the sandstone — rock that was fire itself once, a very long time ago. The field out there is full of formations and every one of them is interesting in its own way, so it came down to choosing quickly and getting low against whichever one I picked. I’d had this frame in mind for a while, with lava in the foreground and the main canyon behind it, and the sky picked the night I got to make it.

It ran about fifteen minutes at varying intensity. A few other groups had been out on the dunes earlier in the evening and every one of them had packed up and gone, so Galoot was empty and we had the whole thing to ourselves.

The lichen on that outcrop was foreground interest and nothing more on this occasion, with the sky as the hero. I’ve spent plenty of other hikes around Snow Canyon and Red Cliffs photographing that lichen up close for its own sake.

The evening runs across three frames, in order: Desert Tortoise at the start of golden hour, Snow Cliffs Ablaze up on the dunes, then this, after I’d already given up and started walking out.