This is one of those photographs that only tells of the beauty of the journey, and that's the story I wanted to portray here. However the real story is one of an adventure that pushed me to my limits.
I twisted my ankle hiking into this scene on some pretty sketchy cliff sides. I've always had a healthy respect for mother nature and my own limitations, but I was not prepared for this hike. The weather on this night shortly turned from decent to bad, there was rain, strong winds and lightning all around us as we tried to capture the scene throughout the night. We almost lost one tent with the oncoming wind it became a kite flying up into the air with one gust luckily it was caught just in time. But the weather was not on our side and we spent the night drifting in and out of sleep, checking on the skies.
The next morning we knew we had to get out, the rock was quickly becoming slick as the rain continued off and on. As we were hiking back I ended up sliding 5ft down a cliff and luckily landed on a ledge below instead of going over, the combination of wet slick rock and and still nursing a twisted ankle made the hike back a little dangerous. With shaky legs and a painful ankle I made it back out of the canyon.
Despite setbacks this was one of my most memorable trips. I think this goes to prove that getting shots like this one is difficult, there are very rare instances where the heavens open and everything goes perfect. To me the beauty is in the challenge, the story, the experience it took to capture beauty like this.