Dusk's Palette: New Year's Day at Bald Rock

Jun 24, 2026

Dusk's Palette: New Year's Day at Bald Rock

There is something about standing at the edge of a mountain overlook in the dead of winter, alone, with the valley going dark below you, that cuts through all the noise. No crowds. No conversation. Just wind, cold stone, and whatever the sky decides to do next.

On January 1st, I drove up to Bald Rock at Cheaha State Park with one goal: catch the first sunset of the year from that overlook. I had been planning it. The date felt right — a clean start, a quiet place, and a specific vision I wanted to chase.

What came back with me is a piece I call Dusk's Palette.

A dramatic, tightly cropped telephoto landscape photograph of a sunset captured from the Bald Rock overlook at Cheaha State Park, Alabama. A massive, glowing yellow sun is partially obscured by heavy, dark, horizontal bands of clouds slicing across the frame. The sky transitions from a brilliant golden-yellow at the top into a deep, fiery orange and dark crimson red at the bottom. In the bottom left corner, the white "Bama Price Photography" watermark is clearly visible.

Chasing the Shot

I wasn't after a wide landscape. I didn't want the valley spread out below me in the frame. I wanted the sun itself — isolated, massive, undiluted.

As the light dropped, a heavy layer of dark, horizontal clouds rolled across the horizon. The kind of clouds that look like they're going to ruin a sunset. Through the lens, they did the opposite — they became bold, deliberate brushstrokes dragged across a sky that was already on fire.

Why a Telephoto Lens

To make that happen, I reached for the Sigma 60-600mm.

For anyone who doesn't live and breathe camera gear: landscape photography isn't always wide-angle. When you zoom a long telephoto lens way in, something called lens compression kicks in. The optical physics physically pulls the background forward. At 270mm, the sun swells to fill the frame — not because of anything done in post-processing, but because of how optics work at that focal length. The clouds close in. The distance between them collapses. Everything tightens.

I shot at f/9 to keep both the sun's surface and the cloud textures sharp across the whole frame.

The Result

When I pulled the file up, the name came immediately. The color range almost doesn't look like a photograph — incandescent yellow at the center bleeding outward through deep orange, then into a bruised, dark crimson at the bottom. The clouds slice through it in thick horizontal bands.

It feels more like an abstract oil painting than a landscape shot. That is exactly what I was after.

Behind the Shot

  • Camera: Sony a7 IV
  • Lens: Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports
  • Focal Length: 270mm
  • Aperture: f/9
  • ISO: 6400

Dusk's Palette is available in the Sun Rises, The Sunsets collection.