40 Nebraskaland • July 2022
try not to set in stone my
travel itineraries when I'm on a
Nebraskaland assignment. You
just never know when you will
need to take a detour.
That was the case in 2015 on a
trip to capture underwater fish photos
on the Valentine National Wildlife
Refuge. I'd planned on meeting friends
for dinner in Valentine, watching the
sun set along the Niobrara River, and
heading to the refuge the next day.
But as I watched a dark storm cloud
approach from the west as I drove up
Highway 83, I fired off a text to tell
them to eat without me, took a left
turn on Calf Camp Road and headed
toward Pelican Lake.
As diffuse sunlight made the lush,
green grass of the Sandhills sparkle
beneath the ominous, blue-gray storm
clouds, I scrambled from one vantage
point to another, head on a swivel,
searching for the right combination of
foreground elements and sky. My haste
led to a momentary lapse of reasoning.
But with a near-simultaneous flash
of lightning and crash of thunder, the
good Lord reminded me I shouldn't be
standing on a hill holding graphite
sticks during a storm. Thankfully, I
didn't fall on my face running back
down the hill to the truck.
I waited for a little more than
hour for the rain to pass. When it
did, I stayed on its tail, chasing the
rainbows I hoped would appear when
the sun broke through and shined on
rain falling to the east. It finally did
a half-hour before sunset. While the
conditions weren't perfect and the
rainbows didn't really pop, I did catch
two, the last from a hill west of Dewey
Lake as the sun set and sweet, warm
light illuminated the prairie.
As a landscape photographer, you
simply hope the golden hours, the first
and last hour of light each day, live up
to their name. More often than not,
they don't. On this evening, however,
I was treated to two golden hours in
one evening, one before and one after
the storm. Every time I look at this set
of images, I'm amazed at how good
the light was. I've never been happier
to have taken a detour and not only be
late for dinner, but miss it entirely.
N
I
