It’s all about the light in the desert, as was the case with this scene. While hunting around for a nice grouping of cottonwood trees among a forest of mostly barren and brown ones, I found this group. The almost perfect mimicry of the shape of the trees, in the ridges of the badlands behind, stopped me dead in my tracks. Shape mimicry is something I always seem to find and gravitate towards almost subconsciously.
As I captured this scene for over an hour, I watched the light change from harsh to soft, then flat again. It’s that afterglow, the 10-15 minutes after sunset when the desert comes alive.
