Foto Friday: Colors and Shapes

Colors and Shapes. Moonscape Overlook, near Hanksville, Utah. Copyright 2024 Eric D. Brown.

I drove out to the Moonscape Overlook near Hanksville, Utah, one morning, hoping for a good sunrise, but the sky had other plans with flat light, muted clouds, and not much color happening overhead. The kind of morning where you stand there for a few minutes, look around, and think: well, now what?

So I started walking.

I spent probably 30 to 45 minutes just moving around the overlook, looking down into the formations, trying different angles and different compositions. I took a few shots of various areas that caught my eye, but nothing was really clicking. That stretch of time can feel like you’re wasting it with no dramatic light, no obvious subject, just you and the terrain and a camera.

But that’s usually when the good stuff happens. When the easy shot isn’t there, you have to work for it.

This one came together because I stopped looking for a sky shot and started paying attention to what was right in front of me. The eroded badlands below the overlook have these flowing lines and layers of blues, grays, and purples that almost look like they were painted. And behind them, the warmer tones of the mesas caught what little light was available.

The whole frame is really about color and shape. No dramatic sky, no golden hour glow. Just the geology doing its thing, millions of years of erosion creating these patterns that you’d never notice if you were only looking up.

I keep coming back to this one. It reminds me that the best photos aren’t always the ones you planned. Sometimes the sky doesn’t cooperate, and that’s what pushes you to look somewhere else; somewhere better.

More of my photography at imagesbyericbrown.com or on Instagram .