This picture happened a long time ago in a national park far, far away. Yet when seeing this picture it feels like I made it last week.

These fins can be found on the trail to Black Cave Arch out to the east. I woke up in the campground (when a person could still easily get a site) on a quite cold early morning in November. After driving over to the parking lot and starting to walk I had the idea to go right and see what the sunrise might do. A curious mind generally pays off with landscape photography. This being the same parking lot where twenty years later I had a beautiful breakfast on one of the picnic tables.

So I’m walking and walking, further and further I go until the trail starts up a fin or two. Off to the right I see in the slowly fading darkness these fins with their repeating patterns.

At the time I was still working as a photojournalist at the Telegraph Herald (the TH) in Dubuque, Iowa. Seeing repeating patterns for a photojournalist always works as a picture and should never be skipped over. So I take a seat on the cold sandstone (it would be a couple years before figuring out the blue foam butt pad), whip the Nikon 400mm f2.8 and wait for the light.

While waiting