I’ll admit it. I shot this out of a moving car window. Sometimes you do what you gotta do.

High, high winds — supposedly a system pushed inland by hurricane Norbert — were blowing in the Four Corners area when my group of journalists were taken to Shiprock for a picnic lunch. Along the way, Shiprock would come and go through clouds of blowing dust and I decided to shoot a series of shots through the window just to see what I could get. I bumped up the ISO to 200 and shot at around 1/1500 of a second to eliminate the bouncing motion of the van. This is one of those shots. I crunched the contrast to make up for what was lost to the dust in the air. In other shots, I’m having trouble seeing the rock at all.

When we made our stop for lunch, I hopped out of the van and grabbed a few “real” shots. Gusts of wind around 65 mph made it difficult to stand, let alone keep a scene framed with a telephoto lens. I’m happy with several of those images but I think I prefer this shot with the rock in cloud shadow for its mood.