This is a sunrise view (looking west) of the most easternmost section of "The Wall" in Badlands National Park. If I turned around, there would be nothing to block the sun as it peeks above the horizon. I had scouted out the location online, but this was my first visit, so I didn't know what to expect. I knew it was at the end of the Door Trail, and everything I read said it wasn't an overly long or strenuous hike. The first surprise when I got there was that there were no cars in the big parking lot. The second surprise was that the trail was actually a wooden boardwalk that was located just behind the formations in this image (the trail ended just to the right of this formation). The last and best surprise was that there was only one other person there the whole time I was shooting. I couldn't think of a better way to start my visit to Badlands.
One of the things I am going to try in 2015 is to play around with presets. For those of you who don't know what presets are, they are pre-arranged editing settings that come with different editing software. Presets can also be purchased (some can be found for free). Some people think that they simply apply a preset and you are done, but in my experience, they are just a starting point that needs to be tailored to the specific photo. In this case, I started with OnOne Perfect Effects preset named "Tarnished Bronze" and fine-tuned it to this end result.