8 Blogs & A Sunset

April 26, 2026 — Day 33

Lone Rock Beach Campground, Glen Canyon Recreation Area, Big Water, UT

Today is May 9th. (LOL, today is May 15th!) That’s how far behind we are on the blogs! So we’re still in the same area. Big Water, UT is right next to Page, AZ. As we write this we’ve entered the “life maintenance” part of the program. Laundry, and of course, blogs, 2 days in Page and a couple elsewhere (susan here: if we told you that’d ruin the suspense!) We’ve being doing blogs all afternoon, and we’ll tell you about that in the future. But for the life of us, we couldn’t remember what we did when we landed in Page.

We blogged. We wrote and published 8 blogs that day. We love revisiting our blog from time to time. It also serves as a record of our travels when we come around to something we’re talking about but can’t quite remember (we see and do a LOT). We know many of you love it. But, you know, sometimes we just don’t want to because we’re tired or more likely distracted by things to do. Then the days just pile up over there in that imaginary corner [we gesture with our hands] getting bigger and bigger which we dutifully ignore because see “bigger and bigger”. So we started “Beast Mode: Blog style” and we’ve knuckled down to write blogs.

But then the sun set. Susan told Paul he could only use 1 photo. (susan here: if you have one spectacular photo do you really need more? I’ll leave you, dear reader, to decide on the spectacular one. I have my pick and it’s probably the same one as yours.)

He was able to cut it to “just” 5!

Sunsets are tricky. They move so fast yet take so long. Every sunset is different and most, frankly, are boring. Back in Provincetown it was all about how the clouds lit up. You needed a clear West and a cloudy East, or better yet, a clear West with a cloudy west. That was special when it happened. We bet you didn’t know that clouds play an important part in how colorful the sky is!

Paul was outside for about an hour, shooting, watching the light play across the rocks, not the clouds. And then the magic happened. These photos were all taken within a 4 minute span. It goes that fast, you could watch the line of shadow and sun move up the rocks. You need to setup early, practice exposures, adjust them as the light changes and wait for the magic to happen.

After Paul took the next shot, he came in and showed it to Susan and she said something like, “You just took the prettiest photo of your life.” (susan here: actually it was something to the effect of “you’re not going to grab anything more spectacular”.) As Paul’s gallery owner told him, “Pretty is a trap.” But darn it sometimes that trap is pretty awesome. This pic is one of those times.

He was about to put the gear away, then he noticed it was still changing!

Paul thinks the next one blows away the 2nd one above, Susan disagrees.
(susan here: I disagree very, very strongly!)

And one more, why not?

Now, you’re all thinking to yourself, did it really look like that? The answer is yes and no. Paul’s camera is very good at making colors more vibrant. But, recently, he’s gone to great pains to make it not do that. Was it this bright? Yes and no. As far as he can tell, the two rocks structures in the 2nd to last photo are about 3 and 5 miles away. So there isn’t that much light coming through. But the light and shadow and color? They were there.