By Scott Shephard

Here's one of the 75,000 photos that I can distinctly remember taking. And it is, like many of my photos, a bit of an accident. I had been taking photos along Iron Creek in the Black Hills and was walking back to my truck. There had been a brief rain shower, which left the vegetation wet and shiny. And then the sun came out and almost as an afterthought I took a picture or two of the trail looking back towards the sun.

Without the sun, there would be no bright highlight on the trail and the little pine trees and the birch trees wouldn't be rimmed by back lighting. In the viewfinder, I didn't see this - it was only when I viewed the photo on the computer screen that I saw how interesting the lighting made this picture.

Discolosure: this photo is enhanced with a Photoshop filter called "Midnight." Altered reality? This isn't photojournalism - it's an art form and I guess you'd called "Midnight" "artistic license."

Canon 5D 1/30s f/6.3 ISO125 60mm