The Story Behind This Shot

Low winter sun lighting the larger of the two Pawnee Buttes and the golden prairie grass at Pawnee National Grassland, Colorado, with the second butte small on the horizon under a heavy purple sky. The light rakes across the grass and picks out the layers in the sandstone. The buttes rise a few hundred feet above the plains in the far northeast of the state, and the cliffs close every spring to protect nesting raptors. A big, open plains print with real drama.