Reflected in the Great Salt Lake's shrunken shallows, the distant, snow-peaked Oquirrh Mountains shine a lighter blue in scattered light, and contrast from this angle with the shadowed flanks of Antelope Island's rising ridges.

I remember this evening well. We drove back into Salt Lake City in mid-afternoon and, with an unscheduled evening before our flights left at dawn the next morning, we decided to head out to the familiar landscapes and wildlife of Antelope Island State Park.

What we encountered was an array of fast-moving cloud layers--some high, some low--along with a cascade of amazing light conditions starting almost two hours before sunset and lasting nearly an hour after. It began when the lower clouds aligned with the sun in varying configurations to stream furious fans of crepuscular rays far and wide over the shimmering lake for one of the longest shows I've ever seen.

Nothing can last forever, though, so sometimes we got these lackadaisical (if light can be ever described as lackadaisical) interludes, when this soft, golden, low light complemented the beautiful blue mountain shadows and skies, and somehow seemed like a watercolor brought to life.

I still remember the greats swarms of bugs there that night too. We first thought they could be some type of mosquito--and we wondered with some concern, given their unbelievable numbers forming a cloud around our car, how many insect bites would it take to exsanguinate us? But thankfully they turned out not be bloodthirsty creatures, and they seemed to have a good time just flying furiously around us without doing any harm beyond testing our sanity. Nature seems to love adding a little surprising twist from time to time.

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With the eastern slope of Antelope Island in shadow, late sunlight still catches the spring snow-covered peaks of the Oquirrh Mountains rising in the distance beyond the depleted waters of the Great Salt Lake, Antelope Island State Park, Utah.

Over the years, I've played around with shooting telephoto landscapes in the soft light during the hour or so before the more colorful sunset light takes over, and I've always liked how much some of these images can look almost like watercolor paintings. The Salt Lake's near-record low water levels created some cool layered compositions with the long lens and I thought the sort of watercolor effect materialized here fairly well. So simple but just a little different.

This image is processed only minimally except for some cloning to remove a few little blurred spots caused by insects flying in front of the lens. I took this shot from the causeway to Antelope Island during last month's awesome photography trip to central Utah with Sky Matthews, and one of the first things we noticed when we got to the park were the almost apocalyptic swarms of insects rising ten or fifteen feet into the air along seemingly the entire causeway and lakeshore. I'm not sure what the bugs were, but they looked enough like giant mosquitos that deciding to get out the car and face the onslaught wasn't an easy choice!

Sky decided to brave it first and jumped out, headed through the grasses and bushes toward the open lakeshore, and was quickly engulfed in more flying bugs than I've ever before seen around a person's head. We all know how making a break for it like that works in horror movies, but thankfully the bugs had already eaten well enough that day (or, more likely, they weren't actually giant mosquitos), so I'm pleased to report that Sky survived the first excursion and we remained mostly unscathed out in the elements for the rest of the evening as well, other than the near impossibility of taking a shot from the causeway without there being a few, or in many cases a lot of, little blurry bug dots in the frame!

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Tags:   Great Salt Lake Antelope Island Salt Lake City State Park Utah Nikon Landscape photobenedict Evening Sunset Watercolor Telephoto Long Lens Lake Mountain Oquirrh Mountains Reflection Light Shadow Clouds

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