While planning my Desert Southwest Road Trip, I was looking forward to photographing the Square Tower House in Mesa Verde. When I arrived at the site, I was disappointed to see that the ruins were under construction. For me, the scaffolding is an eyesore:

Using the cloning tool in Photoshop, I was able to remove the scaffolding.

Square Tower HouseSquare Tower House at Mesa Verde National Park in Mesa Verde, Colorado on August 1, 2014

The above image was taken a couple of hours before sunset. My goal was to capture the image with more directional and warmer light. So, I returned to the overlook about 30 minutes before sunset to try again.

Fortunately, the light overall was far more directional and definitely warmer. Unfortunately, the sun sets a bit too far north in the summer for the light rays to hit the ruins. The ruins are blocked to the north by a mesa. The warm light was just missing the ruins!

The only saving grace is that I had the above image on my sensor from earlier. And, that's the best image that I was going to capture like this during this time of year--particularly once the reconstruction was completed in Photoshop.