This photo is a companion to a previous photo of a Venice Beach sunset I took in 2019. Both photos show Venice’s iconic lifeguard stations on the same evening, although I took this one of a different hut later towards twilight.

It’s fall here in New Jersey, which means the leaves have turned fiery colors with greens now replaced by yellows, oranges, and browns. I wanted to capture that spirit, and a recent rainstorm meant I could get fall color side-by-side with a fully flowing Hemlock Falls in New Jersey’s South Mountain Reservation.

At the end of my Puddles at Sunrise post, I mentioned how I nearly missed out on another amazing photo. This is that photo – a glorious sunrise behind the Nubble Light itself. I was tired and not thinking clearly, and after getting the earlier photo my brain kept telling me “go home, we’re done.” It wasn’t until I saw another photographer shooting in this direction that I realized I could do more.

I love visiting Maine in the summer, especially on the coastline where I can’t get enough of the beaches, lobster rolls, and great scuba diving. One of my favorite spots is the Nubble Light, and I wanted to give it a try for a sunrise photo on a trip I took last summer. But good sunrises are driven by cloud structure, and the sunrise forecast on SunsetWX was consistently unfavorable. Then on one morning things looked a little bit better, so I chanced it.

In 2018, I did a solo backpacking trip to Quartz Lake in Colorado’s South San Juan Wilderness. When planning this trip, I had in mind three photos – a sunset, nighttime, and sunrise photo. I’ve already posted two photos from this trip before – the nighttime photo showing Mars and the Milky Way and the sunrise photo showing the surrounding ridges over Quartz Lake. This photo is the third from the series – the sunset photo taken shortly after I had arrived at the campsite.