It’s good to have an excuse to leave the house, even if you aren’t that optimistic about what you’re going to find out there. Last March, my wife, Kristen, and I took our dog, Cholla, on an overnight trip to Lake Mohave so I could try to photograph a lunar eclipse that was happening that night. I knew, though, that I probably wasn’t going to get a great shot. I’m a landscape photographer, and with the moon high in the sky, making a photo of both it and the landscape around the reservoir would be a challenge. But I was looking forward to the trip anyway.
We drove to a remote spot on Lake Mohave called Restoration Point, but it was very windy, and when I woke up at midnight to photograph the eclipse, I found the moon mostly obscured by clouds, so I went back to bed. This was one of Cholla’s last backpacking trips — we had to say goodbye to her a few months later — so we were car camping to accommodate her. On the drive out in the morning, I suggested we check out some of the other vantage points on the Arizona side of the reservoir.
It was at one of those stops that I made this photo around 11 a.m. or noon. It was raining by then, and as the storm came in, it created waves that were unlike anything I’d seen on an Arizona body of water. Kristen and Cholla stayed in the truck while I went out in my rain gear and set up my tripod.
The biggest challenge was the wind, which was shaking my camera quite a bit. In fact, I had to trash most of my photos because of that movement. Now, I carry a backpacking umbrella to keep my camera dry, but on this trip, I had to use my hat to shield the camera while I got soaked. I didn’t want to totally freeze the motion of the waves, so I used a slightly longer exposure time. This photo, looking across to the California side of Lake Mohave, was the best image I made. It’s not the photograph I had in mind when we left the house, but I’m glad I was there to capture this unexpected scene.