If you’ve been keeping up with things here, I’m sure you know it’s monsoon season in the high Utah desert.  This brings daily or almost daily rain-showers in the afternoon often accompanied by lightning and thunder.  Sometimes we receive such heavy rain that we end up with flash floods sweeping though the area.  Still, even in these circumstances, there’s good landscape photography to be found.  You must focus on the monsoon mood or practically nothing will work.  So, here’s some monsoon mood for you.

After scouting out a great new potential landscape photo location, I found myself wanting more.  I didn’t bring my camera out on that hike because the light was blisteringly terrible.  However, things changed.  I didn’t want to find myself caught outside in a monsoon thunderstorm (which was brewing) so we left.  On my way back, I felt there was a landscape photo waiting for me.  However, I didn’t know where.

We stopped at one of our usual haunts on the way back in case the landscape photo was there.  As it turns out, there was something there for me.  I found the moody clouds extended that direction.  However, the thunderstorm was now behind us.  Things were much safer that way for a landscape photo.  Also, I had monsoon mood to work with.

One particular site I keep revisiting was looking promising again.  I returned to the car for my camera gear.  As the hike wasn’t far, I didn’t need to worry about the scene changing.  Here’s the view which captivated my attention.

As you can see, the monsoon mood of the clouds changes the scene from something bright and cheery red-orange to something darker.  It also helps that the water level was running a bit higher than normal too.  This is due to the monsoon moisture which we’re so very grateful for.

So, what do you think of this monsoon mood?  I know it’s a bit new for me in my landscape photography.  Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below.