When we lived in the Denver area, I absolutely loved visiting the Rocky Mountain National Park whenever I could. It was about 1.5 hours away, and had some of the most spectacular scenery in the United States. On one visit in 2015, I wanted to find some scenery from the Trail Ridge Road up high in the tundra, but I struggled to find a good spot. On a hunch, I parked at the Lava Cliffs Overlook and walked up the hill across the road where I found this amazing view of the Trail Ridge Road zigzagging down the mountain with Longs Peak in the background.

When Gwen and I visited Carmel-by-the-Sea in 2018, I took advantage of California’s geography and beaches to take photos of the sunset. The last time I posted a photo from this trip, it was from right before the sun had set below the horizon. This photo is from well after sunset – about 35 minutes later than the earlier photo. This was well into “blue hour” territory, and one could argue the light was closer to dark than blue. But from the very last drop of light in the sky, I was able to compose and shoot this piece of driftwood on the beach.

Spring in Vermont can be magical, and we were fortunate it put on a wonderful show for our trip over Memorial Day, 2019. The flowers were blooming, the grass was a lush green, and everything just felt so alive. And while it rained (a lot), I was especially fortunate to get out for some photography between the rainstorms to find this scene near Waitsfield.

I’ve already written several times about my work trip to Paris in 2018 which yielded an absolutely incredible evening of photography after a solid day of rain. After taking two sunset photos of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and its statue on top, the evening continued with blue hour providing a benedictory backdrop for the Musée d’Orsay at twilight. This was the final photo I took on that evening, closing out an extraordinary day of weather and photography.

The weather had been wild on our drive to Vermont. Thick angry clouds loomed in the sky while incredible rainfall pounded the car and flooded the surrounding fields. The Mad River was rising over its banks, and the highway patrol had closed VT-100 between Hancock and Granville because of high water. With no cell service, we had to use my Garmin GPS to plot an alternate route through the green mountains on back roads. We were incredibly tired by the time we arrived in Waitsfield, but then the weather started to clear and a little bit of sunlight peaked out in the gloom.