Snow!

There were several big winter storms this year, but the biggest occurred at the beginning of January. Red Rock Canyon received anywhere from 6" of snow at the lowest elevations to over a foot at the highest. I woke up early and made it to Red Rock Overlook before the sun rose. The storm had just cleared and the temperature with wind chill was in the teens! I was anticipating the sun breaking threw at sunrise and changing the scene to colors of pinks and oranges, but the clouds blocked out the sun.
Instead, I hiked down to the creek bed and took several amazing images. The one on the left called Rainbow Mountain and Winter Creek was taken with my Tamron 28-80mm lens @ 50mm. I had never hiked down to this spot before because the creek is usually dry. On rare occasions it is flowing after a big rain storm, but I had never seen this combination of water, snow, and clouds before. The horizontal image below, called Winter Along Pine Creek, was taken from the same spot as the other one. It was taken with the same Tamron 28-80mm lens but at a wider angle of 35mm. I had a magical morning photographing this scene, waiting for the clouds to move into the right positions and for the wind to stop blowing so that the creek would be still.