Buckeye, Arizona.
Regular readers know of my love of Arizona sunsets and my regular trips to the desert a couple miles from our house to photograph them. Well, I missed the trip to the desert for one spectacular sunset. You see last week was Superbowl Sunday. Of course, I had to watch it. By half-time, the game was all but decided and though it was no longer interesting, I sat and watched like some robot.
My wife was paying less attention to the game and happened to glance out our patio door. Excited, she told me I needed to step outside to look at the sunset. Our patio is on the west end of the house, so I ventured outside the patio door to be greeted by this lavender, orange, red, and gold sky.
About the photo: Putting my Samsung S20U to work, I captured several images of a sky that was too big for the camera to take it all in. I loaded the images into Lightroom and used the Panorama merge tool to join two photos that showed the bulk of the clouds that were illuminated by the sun so low on the horizon. After a few tweaks in Lightroom, I sent it off to Luminar AI for final touches. That beautiful sky didn’t need much, I just applied some exposure masking along and below the fence line to darken the areas that were drawing attention away from the sky. If your browser allows, click on the image to enlarge it and put it on a dark background.
John Steiner
Flare Legend Adventures
The enlarged picture is really fabulous!
Arizona sunsets are something to behold!
Wow, I love the reds and oranges in this.
And I swear I didn’t touch the saturation controls!!
Incroyable! The amazing sunsets and sunrises in Arizona are giving my life here a little more oomph.
They are one of the joys we experience here every winter.
I would also give up any sports broadcast for a scene so beautiful!
Indeed! Though we are only a couple of miles from my favorite desert viewpoint, the colors are so fleeting, we’d never get there in time to enjoy the light show.
Some of the most glorious sunrises and sunsets are those I remember from New Mexico. There was one place, on a hill from Santa Fe to Albuquerque called La Bajada….I used to often pull off the road just to watch the sunset. Just incredible.
My sister lives in Albuquerque, so we visit there often. I will have to ask her about La Bajada, and maybe visit there on our next trip to New Mexico!
Glad you didn’t miss this one. Fantastic.
Indeed!!
The enlarged version is stunning, Wow!! So glad you listened to your wife. 🙂
Even though we didn’t see it from our favorite mountain viewing place, it was still a magnificent sunset.
Nice result, I particularly like the structure of the clouds.
Thanks. I did minimal editing but I did tweak the small and medium size details in the image to bring them out.