I was driving north from Phoenix, AZ, toward Canyonlands National Park and had been watching the clouds to the west. A few miles north of Blanding, Utah, I came upon a long stretch of golden-brown fallow fields that really complimented the sky.

When I saw the lone tree, I thought I'd found a long lens-compressed perspective image. But once I stopped and saw the irrigation machinery in front of the tree, I knew I'd found a different image altogether. Switching to an extremely wide-angle lens, I tried several different points of view until I knew I had the photo I wanted.

This image was created from a 5-stop frame merge.