I once read in a magazine that in the past, National Geographic editors would not even consider landscape submissions unless they were taken during sunrise or sunset, because that is when the light was soft and golden. As a result, I have always had the mentality that those were the only two windows of time in which you can take a truly epic photograph. My trip to Scotland changed that.

The UK is infamous for its capricious weather, and our time there was definitely a testament to that; if we had shied away from hiking whenever the weather forecast was unfavorable, we would have hardly hiked at all. As a result of all our wet adventures, I have realized a third golden window for landscape photography: immediately after a storm.

On the day of the photograph, we hiked east along the A82 out of Glen Coe to reconnect with the West Highland Way at King's House. It started out a beautiful morning, but two hours into the journey, a bizarre snowstorm/rainstorm came upon us, blurring the sky as if we were in a blizzard. 30 minutes later, it passed just as quickly as it came. When we reached the West Highland Way and began to climb Devil's Staircase, the clouds parted in such a way that the surrounding mountains remained shrouded in shadows, but the valley behind us was flooded with golden rays of light, which illuminated the Way behind us.

To me, the power of photography is its ability to freeze a beautiful moment, however fleeting, and make it permanent, even if it may never happen again; immediately after a storm, if you wait just long enough and if you are just lucky enough, you can find yourself such a moment.