A general rule of thumb is to position yourself in a breathtaking location, and wait until the hours of sunrise and/or sunset. Light is generally more pleasing to the eye during these 'golden hours.' And, in most locations (especially in the desert) those hours mean shifts in temperature and usually small cloud formations. Nothing is quite as dull as a hazy, bright sunny sky with nothing to look at.
Just this weekend, I hiked up into the Huachuca Mountains in southeast Arizona, near the Mexican border. I caught the standard, and pleasing (and usually totally predictable in the desert) sunset over the Patagonia Mountains some fifty miles west of me across the San Rafael Valley, a beautiful, completely desolate wilderness in the high desert.
What I was aiming for was to catch the standard, beautiful Southwest U.S. sunrise, but my timing was off. Being the high desert in winter-time, I suffered through fog with gale-force winds ripping across the small saddle I camped out in. Not to mention the over 8,000 foot elevation gave me mild hypoxia and made it very difficult to get a fire going. So, after a night of struggling to stay warm, I stepped out of the tent into a blanket of fog... morning sunrise ruined. I trudged back down to the trail head when I stepped below the cloud layers.
Like I said, timing, and location.
