Big Country (off I-15, near Baker, California).

This one probably speaks for itself, but I’ll talk over it anyway. This is big country — this is the view from a 4WD trail east of Afton Canyon and somewhere west(ish) of Baker, California, a track that roughly parallels Interstate 15 on its way to Vegas (and the word “roughly” is appropriate here…). I’d stopped and taken a bunch of hand-held photos of the mountains in the distance with a longish (70-200mm) lens on my Nikon D300, but I didn’t hit on the right way to get the full effect of the size, textures, colours, shimmers, and subtle beauty until I had the genius idea (duh!) to actually include the traffic on the freeway below (which was actually a fair way off — this was a longish lens). This is the only one that really works for me, but I really wish I’d put the truck and the freeway a little further up in the frame (the others were better framed but had too many  — or the wrong type — of vehicles in them).