My goodness, it’s October!  That means colorful leaves are on their way (and indeed, are already here at the higher elevations), and as such, we should head back east to the Great Smoky Mountains!  Well, we’ve got one last stop here on Picture of the Week before returning home, and that is at Lost Dutchman State Park, just outside Phoenix, Arizona – my favorite place to visit when I’m in Phoenix.

This year on my Phoenix visit, rather than trying to see a bunch of different things, I decided to just double-down on the Lost Dutchman State Park to see what all I could capture there.  Every evening after work, I’d change clothes real quick and drive out to the park for sunset, and each day I was met with different conditions: crystal clear to stormy, and everything in between!  It made for some really fun shooting, and as you’ll see below, a pretty diverse set of images.  My absolute favorite, however, is the image above.  A lone cactus facing off against some pretty epic looking clouds in the distance.  For me, I love the drama in the sky, and the simplicity overall of the image with that idyllic looking cactus, still shining in the sun before the rain started.

There’s plenty more to explore down below in the Alternative Perspective section, I hope you enjoy!  We’ll bid the desert a farewell and return to the mountains of Tennessee next week.  See you then!

–Dan Thompson