Nikon D810, 1/400 sec, f/11, 120mm, ISO 200

I spied this lone yucca plant sitting along the side of the road while driving from Chiricahua National Monument to my next destination. It was sitting in the middle of a large field with no other vegetation rising above the golden grasses. It was so eye-catching, I just had to stop.

The sky and grass separate by the mountains breaks the image in half with the yucca spanning both halves. This is a very nice composition in a random spot in the road.

A Yucca in the Middle of Nowhere: 31.992226° -109.445457°

Nikon D810, 0.4 sec, f/18, 120mm, ISO 200

Fungus and moss create interesting layers on the rock pinnacles at Chiricahua National Monument. Without these color bits, wider landscape images (like this one) taken at Chiricahua are rather bland, consisting of browns and dark greens. These sprinkles add splashes of color and interesting detail to what would otherwise be a rather drab image.

Chiricahua National Monument: 32.007286° -109.312335°

Nikon D810, 1/8 sec, f/9.0, 24mm, ISO 200

Here is sunrise at Chiricahua National Monument. The sun rises at your back as you overlook the rock pinnacles. As the sun rises, light walks down the ridge on the right side and into the valley of rock pinnacles. In this image, sunlight illuminates the brown part of the right hand ridge line while the rest of the image is in shadow.

This does create balanced light issues when half the rock pinnacles are in sunlight while the rest are in shadows. Once light reaches the top of the pinnacles you essentially have a period of time where it is hard to capture usable images until sunlight illuminates all of the pinnacles.

Chiricahua National Monument: 32.007286° -109.312335°