I travel all over the world to make expressive images. Yet I found this one on my own back doorstep. I live on the edge of the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, and made this wideangle image over my back fence. The sky belongs to all of us, and nature often paints it in colors so delicate yet vivid that they defy description. The key to this image is the towering cauldron of gauzy clouds, swirling in air currents tumbling upon each other in a pattern that seems to explode over the low hills that flank Piestewa Peak, the highest mountain in Phoenix. I use the horizon as context, and one of my yucca plants as an anchor layer, letting nature’s palette do the rest.