Sunday night was a nice opportunity for me to dash out for a last minute photo fix, so I grabbed a friend and headed west. The sunset was approaching quickly, but I already had a foreground object in mind: Crown Butte. I know a spot which, if you have four wheel drive and aren’t afraid to get muddy, provides some fantastic sunset opportunities. I had a clean truck before this event, but now am still caked in mud. Fun on multiple levels!

The colors displayed by a North Dakota sunset are striking. They turn gold and/or red as the sun breaches the horizon, turning to wonderful pinks and purples as it wanes. The gold this evening was incredible. It also highlighted some very interesting features:

Note the corkscrew-shaped clouds traversing just above the horizon. These were quite noteworthy and a good reason to make a wide panoramic shot from multiple exposures. I set up my tripod and panned across the display, assembling several of the shots together in order to show you this wild looking formation. I’ll leave the “secret military test plane” theories to the tin foil hat crowd.

As soon as it came, the sunset departed. The golden and reddish hues had made their transition to purples and back to blue. This wide shot of the sky shows the evening sky encroaching on the bold display as night was just around the corner. Since the terrain required that I be able to see the best way to navigate through the mud, it was time for us to load up the cameras and head back in, satisfied that we’d had a successful photography outing on short notice.