Month 5 in Review - May

This month was incredible for photography. Traveling to Colorado and Utah provided me with endless photo opportunities wherever I went.  I shot the mountains, sand dunes, arches and canyons, and oddities along the way. Although I didn't take tripod photos every day (there was just too much to see, too many places to get to and not enough time), I feel that I came back with a dozen images which I really enjoy. And I learned that photographing the desert and red landscapes is very, very different from photographing grey mountains.

Perhaps my most serious effort ever at getting a single shot was at Mesa Arch on May 8th, where I woke up at 3:00am in Moab, left town at 4:20, and arrived in Canyonlands just after 5:10am after seeing the most incredibly Milky Way and dark night sky along the way.  I think I was the fifth person there; about twenty others appeared before sunrise, and as those rays poked through, the shutters went off.  I never experienced anything like it.  Click, click, click, click - kinda like the Camera Store video that's gone viral.  In a way it was crowded, not the solitude in the middle of nowhere that I may have expected.  And in a way it seemed surreal.  After over a year of looking at Mesa Arch sunrise photos, I sat there behind the arch, about to see the same in person.  Would I have to pinch myself or what?  I got 289 shots during those two hours (mostly thanks to bracketing and test shots for composition while it was still dark), which I have condensed down to about five keepers.

Some stats for May:

• Favourite photo: Day 128 - Shafer Trail
• Least favourite photo: Day 145 - New Food
• Most challenging photo to take: Bonus Photo (Day 128) - Mesa Arch
• Most creative photo: Day 126 - Time Stands Still (the lens was only one inch from the truck) 
• Most used Photoshop edits: sponge (saturate), unsharp mask
• Number of photos taken this month: ~2,230
• Number of days on which I wouldn't have taken a photo if I didn't have to for this: 14/31
• How I feel about this project: I'm starting to think that I'll do another year after this one.  I'm enjoying this, remembering mundane daily things that would long be forgotten if they weren't captured in photos.

Which is your favourite photo from May?