Colorado River through Canyonlands National Park from Dead Horse Point State Park, Utah. This landscape photo shows the classic carved canyon formations typical of red rock country in the American Southwest.

As I wandered around Dead Horse Point early one morning, I was looking to capture the grandeur of the scene with it's dramatic colors but needed some foreground interest to anchor the image. This bush fit the bill. Not only was it an offsetting green but it's shape echoed the bend in the river magnificently. The clouds that morning were perfect, the air was crisp and clean and the sun was performing magic playing hide and seek with the clouds and dappling the landscape with sun and shade.

This is an HDR merge of 4 shots taken with a Canon EOS 40d centered around 1/80 sec, f/8.0, ISO 200 with a Canon EF-S 10-22mm F/3.5-4.5 USM lens at 22mm on a Gitzo tripod with RRS ball head. Tonal adjustments made in Adobe Lightroom 5.3 and some minor edits in Adobe Photoshop CS4.