This shot was taken facing west which meant the rising sun hit the rock and slowly lit it from the top down.

Sometimes light pollution can be your friend. In this case I was too early to see the Milky Way but the clouds lit up red from Palm Springs, making the landscape look like Mars.

Once again at Barker Dam, the wind died down long enough for me to grab a couple frames of a perfectly mirror-like pond. The sky was an incredible shade of blue and I was fortunate there were no other souls around.