Sunday afternoon and time for a hike. I headed to Inks Lake State Park this week as the weather was nice and I wanted to walk those trails again. Either my memory is wrong or they have added a hiking loop. I had hiked the trails across the main road before, but then they had them closed for a while. Now that they are open again, there seems to be an additional loop or they have divided the old loop in two. I don’t know but I hiked out there.
First you have to hike back to the main road and get across it near a curve. But the speed limit is 45 MPH on the road, so the cars and trucks generally go no faster that 70. I wouldn’t do this with small children. Anyway, the hiking trail continues on the other side of the road up into the granite hills. It is some climbing and rough stumbly trails, so I would call it moderately strenuous. The views aren’t spectacular but you can see the lake and a lot of prickly pear.
I messed around down by the lake a while. Set up and shot photos of a tree in the water that turned out awful. Then shot photos of some geese that really didn’t turn out well. I don’t think the geese photograph well under cloud-cover.
I then wandered back around the lake and found a place to consider. I could see out to part of the lake and there was some orange light happening on the horizon, so I took out my phone app to see what to expect.
Sunset was still an hour off, it was going to be a bit west of where I wanted it, and the clouds were thick. But I kind of liked the framing. So, I logged it away in my brain and went to another part of the park.
As the sun was about to set, the clouds seemed to be opening a little, so I decided to hike back down to this spot. The sunset’s appointed time came and I assumed it was setting somewhere behind the clouds and hills. The sky was gray until about 10 minutes after sunset so I headed back up the trail to my car. When I got within sight of the parking lot, the western sky began to light up orange. So, I jogged all the way back down the rocky trail to the spot.
The photo above is at 24mm and the photo below is at 35mm focal length. Not sure which works best.
There was still some color in the clouds to the west when I got there though it didn’t quite extend all the way across. I was hoping for more color reflected in the lake. This might be a good spot for earlier in the winter when the sun is setting a little farther south. It helps if you imagine the sounds of multiple geese honking in the distance when you look at these photos.
For editing, I added contrast to the sky to bring out cloud texture. I selected just the land and desaturated it quite a bit as it was too green for what I wanted. I selected the water and tried to bring out the color in the highlights. Globally, I increased saturation of the reds, oranges, and yellows a little. I think that is about like I saw it while listening to half a dozen geese honking.
That’s Inks Lake. It’s close by and enjoyable hiking, but not super scenic. Thanks for reading.
Jason Frels 
those last couple of photos of the lake and the sunset are beautiful. I like the orange and pink sky colors, and it’s nice to see those colors reflected in the lake as well…
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Thanks. I was mainly just out for the hiking. It was nice to run across that scene. I don’t think I would have seen it any other time of the year as the leaves would have blocked the view.
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luck comes to those who are prepared!
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You captured the beauty of this sunset perfectly! It’s just gorgeous!
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Thanks!
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You are so welcome Jason! The colors in your photos were just amazing!
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That’s looks like a pretty cool phone app, and I can see how useful it would be at predicting where the sun will set.
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It does rely on the compass in the phone being accurate, which it mostly is but it isn’t perfect. You can calibrate it, but I haven’t tried to do this. I mainly want a good idea of where the sun it setting and it doesn’t have to be perfect.
If you were using it to predict moonrise at a specific place for a long-lens photo, you’d want it to be as accurate as possible.
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I can see how you’d want good accuracy with a long-lens photo. That must be a real pain setting up the tripod and aiming at a target that will be moving.
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I have seen a lot of cool full moon shots against some building on a distant hill or something. It is a lot of work, but it is impressive. I don’t have the lens for such a shot.
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“The Sun sets somewhere..” a very true fact. 🙂 Glad it wasn’t elusive for you. The sunset photos are beautiful, I think I prefer the 2nd sunset pic but they are very close. Listening to the geese honk in my mind adds to the beauty. I liked the prickly pear photo too.
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The geese were really arguing about something. Perhaps they were in a fowl mood.
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Groan! I see you are trying to make good on your promise to do more puns today.
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Did you think this was a post about the sunset or pun sets?
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I believe both! You may want to know that I bought plastic coffee cups to throw so that that they don’t break when hitting something hard. Just saying. 🙂
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Try paper cups. Better for the environment you know.
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True but….they don’t throw very far.
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By the way, I now have that duet with Elton John and George Michael singing “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me” stuck in my brain. Maybe you will too now.
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Thanks for sharing. Nothing like having one line of a song 🎵 stuck in my head!
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I guess you’ll have to youtube it or something and learn the other lyrics.
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But that would get it stuck in my brain more
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It would replace all the goose honking going on in your brain.
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Sooo “helpful!”
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I like shooting the prickly pear cacti, but I never feel like I get a good photo with them. Maybe I should hang up there around sunset.
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Good idea!
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Excellent photos. Love the colours!
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Nothing better than a hike or that day which ends in gazing at those magic colors of the evening. Thanks for sharing Jason. Feels i lived one evening too.
Narayan x
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