This week, the Lens-Artists team welcomes guest host, Siobhan of Bend Branches. She writes, “What glowing moments have been special in your life? …I’m looking forward to your interpretations of this prompt!” You can read her entire challenge post here.

In response to her challenge, my first thought was of a visit to Arches National Park, almost a decade ago. I remember vividly the sun rising over the mountain range in the east. As the sun chased away the shadows on the bluffs and outcroppings, I was enthralled by the color change from dark brown to glowing golden hues.

High on a hill above the terrain in Bismarck, North Dakota, the view of the sunset enticed me to create another panoramic image from two RAW images captured by my Nikon D500. Captured in Sonali’s Garden, it was late fall and the browns in the grasses were again transformed to gold, glowing under the setting sun.

For a few years, Pyrotechnics Guild International would visit West Fargo, North Dakota, then our home city. We never missed this demonstration of guild companies that market fireworks commercially. They always showed off their brightest and best packages.

Over the years, I’ve shared many a sunset from our winters in Arizona, but North Dakota skies have their own special sunsets. This image was captured about 12 miles (19 km) from our home in Fargo.

On a late September morning in 2015, the fog enveloped the city along the Red River of the North. When I saw the glow of the street lights along the bridge on 4th Avenue North, I pulled over and stepped out of the car to capture the eerie view with my Nikon D7000.

A pedestrian bridge spans one of the two Interstate highways that traverse the city of Fargo. Late one afternoon in 2013, I took a tripod and my D7000 to the center of the bridge and set it up to shoot through an opening in the chain link fence that envelopes the bridge. Shortly after dusk, I tried some long exposure images to capture the glowing light trails of vehicles passing under the bridge and approaching a curve in the highway. This image remains my favorite of the collection. Exposure setting details are noted on my Flickr site if you are interested.

In 2017, I attended an annual conference at the Breezy Point Resort in northern Minnesota. One late April day, I was up early to capture the sunrise. I thought it wouldn’t last long as there was an overcast that would soon envelop the sun. As it turned out, the layer was thin and it burned off quickly leaving me the opportunity to capture one of my all-time favorite images. As I have shared that image, and a few others in previous challenges as well, I’ve included them in the Flickr gallery that accompanies this post. You can find full-screen images of these photos and those favorites on Flickr here.

Thanks to Siobhan for taking the time to create this week’s challenge and to inspire us by simply reminding us of those golden moments in our own lives, moments I was lucky enough to have captured in digital bits. Next week, Tina provides the inspiration for our next challenge on April 15 at noon EDT. If you aren’t following her already, you’ll find lots of photographic inspiration on her site here.

If you’ve not yet joined in the fun for our weekly challenges, you can find details in a how-to right here. I’ll be looking forward to checking out your posts.

John Steiner