Incredible soft light one morning at Yellowstone.
I'm struck with two thoughts about photography here. The first is this: Frequently I find that I respond to visual styles that relate in some way to more classical art forms. (What media would you use to paint this scene? I'm not a painter, but I know my own answer to that.) To what extent is that we've been trained to admire particular looks, and to what extent are we more hard-wired to appreciate certain features of an image. We know from eye tracking studies that there are some fairly deeply hard-wired things about the way people see images, and also some which are clearly learned. But which is which, and to what extent?
Second, not every image is going to be the image I set out to create on a particular day. Often I get excited about trying to add to an existing body of work. Weather doesn't always cooperate, and you can respond to that by not bothering to "hunt" the images that you're not looking for, or you can respond to that by gathering the images that come along. I'm sure I engage in a fair bit of both practices, probably leaning toward the former, but I'm glad I put off the hunt that day to capture this unexpected moment of beauty.