The Best Shot I've Ever Taken

In my opinion, this is the best shot I've ever taken.

October, 2005. We lived in Tucson AZ at the time. My mother was visiting us and we went to the Flagstaff-Grand Canyon-Sedona area. I had my newly and proudly acquired Nikon D50 d-SLR kit (link) with me of course. We were nearby Flagstaff AZ & saw a national park. We entered in to check it out.

On the way in, I saw this. I wanted to get out & photograph it immediately. My mother, as I recall, was not too keen on my wanting to stop and get out and photograph that right in the driveway, even though there weren't any persons behind us, it was hardly a "high profile" type of situation. She was somewhat insistent that I could photograph whatever once we got in & parked. But I was adamant--I see what I want right here/right now. Besides, we're here to take photos among other things--and I most certainly see one.

Here is what I saw:

Click to enlarge (20051001 092156_d50)

Believe it or not, I did NO modifications to this photograph, none whatsoever. I shot it in JPEG mode, surprisingly (at the time I didn't have as much memory card or hard drive space, I shoot such shots in RAW mode all of the time now), fortunately everything was dead-on as-is.

I got many good photographs from that trip, but that one was the highlight. In fact, for awhile, I was not satisfied with any other photos I took, because none of them matched this one. Even now, with me past that mentality, I still consider it the best photograph I've ever taken.