This photo was taken during a recent astronomy club camping trip to a dark sky area located near the northern face of Jebel Shams, the highest mountain in Oman. The previous night, our group observed several planets and other celestial objects. I had left my camera shooting a few hundred images (to assemble later as a star trail) and went to sleep. I wanted to wake up before dawn to photograph the sunrise over the massive wall of rock that rises nearly 2,000 m right in front of us.
Rainfall is scarce in this area, which features abundant dry rock outcrops and a few isolated shrubs. The rocks provide a sense akin to that of an alien landscape, with their varied shapes and rusty colour. They are also very tricky to walk on, as they are sharp and pointy; you do not want to trip and fall, or you might injure yourself. Hence, I left my tent and walked slowly and surely to a couple of locations that I had scouted the day before. I wanted to frame the arid foreground against the mountain wall.
As the first light of the day appeared, I set up my camera on the tripod with a wide-angle lens mounted on it. I decided on an aperture small enough to provide a large depth of field, which resulted in a few seconds of exposure time. The soft and warm light of dawn bathed the barren landscape with a special colour, just what I was looking for.
