As you may have read in earlier blog posts, I had thoroughly enjoyed photographing the sunrises, sunsets and golden hours at the Grand Canyon during a trip to the southwest in July. I was beyond satisfied with the great photos I had gotten on the rim as I packed up my gear that final morning to head out for good.

But we weren’t leaving Arizona yet. We were going to rest up for a day and then take one final day to explore a special part of Arizona I had heard a lot about, but had never yet laid eyes upon. I was very excited to gather just a few more shots of this alien environment at one more sunrise and one more sunset before heading back east.

But, things did not go as planned.

On our day of rest, we took our time breaking camp outside the Grand Canyon. This was our fantastic, free, dispersed camping site in Kaibab National Forest:

On the way out, we passed by the Little Colorado River Gorge. It looked so small compared to its appearance not that far downstream! Of course, being in the middle of the day, I experimented with B&W to make more artistic photos of the place.

And then we headed to the only town in the world where you can see teal-colored McDonald’s arches!

But we weren’t simply headed to this place for a fast food logo anomaly. What got my heart pumping was the moment we turned a bend at the mouth of Oak Creek canyon, greeted with a truly outstanding tableau.

I could hardly wait for tomorrow! I had been blown away by the Grand Canyon. And now, I was looking forward to being blown away again in Sedona!

After settling in to our quaint little Airbnb, I made sure to download all my photos from the past few days to make sure I had clean SD cards to work with at this new location. And then we attempted to go to bed as early as we could. The day had gone perfectly as planned.

Just like at the Grand Canyon, sunrise the next morning was ridiculously early. I needed to be on location, ready to shoot by 5:15am. And I had a 30min drive to get where I wanted to go. So long before light, I was out the door and on my way.

Missing an important turn close to my destination, it took me longer to get where I wanted to be for sunrise, so I moved into double-time after finally finding my parking spot. Thankfully, underbrush is sparse in this corner of the globe, but I still had to bushwhack a bit to get high enough for a vantage point I was happy with. Just before 5:30am, I had my camera set up, scene composed, and everything leveled up for my very first photo.

The simple mistake that ruined great photos. . .

And that’s when I made a life-changing discovery: photography is all about the SD card. 🙂

Last night, back at the Airbnb, I had taken the SD card out of my camera to download the photos. And left it in my computer.

“No problem” I thought. “I always carry spare SD cards with me.”

But the place where I store spare SD cards in my camera bag was empty. To this day, I do not exactly know where all my spare SD cards were. I’m pretty sure it had to do with the way I had shuffled things around after photographing the AFHE event the previous weekend. But after tearing through my camera bag multiple times, and searching every possible spot I may have left a memory card in the rental car, I came to the fearful realization that sunrise would go undocumented that morning.

I had made one simple mistake that ruined many great photos that morning. I had learned the hard way that little things make a big difference in the success of a venture! And now I had proof. 🙂

But I was determined not to let that morning’s golden hour have the same fate!

Driving half an hour to the Airbnb, and then half an hour back, was obviously not a good solution. Getting an SD card in this way would not only swallow up the golden opportunities of post-sunrise light, it also seemed quite inefficient.

So I googled the closest store that I thought would have an SD card for sale.

“Wow. The closest Walmart is 40min away?!”

I headed to one of the only local places I could think of that was open at 5:45am. And well, I found out that Circle K gas stations don’t sell SD cards.

I tried a grocery store next. A place called Basha’s. They opened at 6:00am. But the only help I was able to get from them was a suggestion that Walmart would have them.

The precious minutes of gorgeous light slipped by as I racked my brain, poured over Google Maps, and drove to the next open supermarket.

Safeway thought they had SD cards for sale. But they didn’t.

They said Walgreens would be open, though. But it wasn’t.

So I watched the golden light of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity fade away forever I sat on a park bench waiting for Walgreens to open over the next 40min.

But boy was that a pretty place to sit! And the time was not wasted. It was a great time for prayer, Bible reading . . . and reflection. The past 9 days had been go, go, go. Always something to do. Always something to preoccupy my mind. Though the previous day had been physically relaxing, it wasn’t until that morning that my brain actually took a break. I truly enjoyed my devotion time that morning! And I actually stopped to chat with some complete strangers. I had time. Why not? I think that’s what they used to do in the old days, do you think?

All too soon, 7:00am arrived. Of course, I could have headed back to the Airbnb and not bothered with taking any photos at all that morning.

But I was in a unique place, and the day was still young. I decided to pick up an SD card at Walgreens and go for a hike. I evidently needed another memory card, to have as a spare, right? 🙂

And as it turned out, that morning hike under harsher light turned out to be an excellent experience! It was good exercise, physically, because I was going at neither a “family pace” nor a “edge-of-light pace”, if you know what I mean. (Hint: going very slowly or not going very far.)

And it was a good exercise in creativity too, photographically! Even at a faster pace, I stopped to snap a lot of photos. And I rarely photograph landscapes intentionally in the middle of the day! So it was quite educational, I learned a lot, and I actually walked away with several great photos that I liked. In fact, I have since used some of the photos from that hike in one of my Photo Class presentations. But, I’ll have to share the experiences, insights, and photos from that hike in a blog post some other day. 🙂