Sometimes an image only lasts for a second. That was the case with this shot. I was shooting a different shot about 90 degrees off of this shot when I looked right and saw the sun hitting the vineyard in the foreground. I quickly swiveled the camera and began shooting this image.
Usually, I will shoot dozens or even hundreds of images of a given shot. That’s one of the beauties of digital: no film cost, so you don’t really have to be too judicious. But in this case things just moved very quickly. I think I took less than 10 shots. When I got back and looked at the images, only three images had the sun hitting the vineyards, 45 seconds apart. Who knew landscape photography could be like sports photography?