Warm in the badlands.... Jerry Mercier

It was overcast in late November and cold where I lived in Wisconsin. Winter was gonna last a long time. I checked the weather forecast for Wall South Dakota and it said several days of sun and highs in the 70s. 

With that I put my stuff in the car and headed west.

Ten hours later I was in Badlands National Park making images at sunrise and thankful that I made the choice.

The light didn't last long before the sun disappeared behind clouds but that was alright with me. I put my camera away and drove through the park towards the city of Wall. It was warm and I had my windows open.

The plan was to stop at Wall Drug. (just because I was near Wall Drug) Then get some gas and food and head back to the park by early afternoon and see what I could do with sunset. (above is the park road)

Everything went to plan and early afternoon found me a mile or so from the car amid some cool looking eroded rock formations.

The days aren't very long in western South Dakota in late November so I had to hustle to get some images as the sun moved towards the horizon.

When I say hustle, I mean I was literally running to get to the different rock formations. Always playing with colors, sky, shadows and light.

The variables constantly changing as I hurried to capture the beauty around me.

Often I've found it impossible to hide my shadow while photographing the landscape out there.

Since that's the case. I've embraced my shadow and started intentionally incorporating it into some of the images as in the photo above.

The idea is to have fun and just keep moving until sunset. There are so many beautiful features and such a limited amount of time before the light's gone.

The difference between great colors and pretty mundane stuff can be the matter of a few inches or feet one way or the other. 

The angles between the lens, rocks and sun make all the difference. I'm not sure how big this feature appears here, but in real life it's more than a quarter mile around it and some of it is impassable due to vertical rock walls and other features.

The point being, I had to cover a lot of ground to get where I needed to be to make the images I was hoping for. And it was a lot of fun.

So I'm really glad it was warm in Badlands National Park last November and I decided to go out there.