I was standing in the parking lot of a Sheetz store recently filling up my car with gas.

The sky was shifting its colors as night began to creep in.

I took a couple of deep breaths and looked up at the sky.

I realized in that single moment that I almost missed a perfect opportunity: An amazing sunset photo.

As someone who used to do big budget commercials with high-end cinematographers, I appreciated that moment on a couple of different levels.

One: if you watch TV commercials, you may have noticed that brands always try to show their store fronts, signs, trucks, cars—anything outdoors— in that golden light of a perfect sunset.

Two: if parking lots or street scenes are needed, fire trucks splash loads of water onto the surfaces to reflect the light, which makes the scene look more moody and pristine. (This was a practice that started in Hollywood.)

Point is, clients/companies pay for this kind of light and these kinds of situations. They pay a lot, as a matter of fact.

But here I was, staring at that most desirable of lighting scenarios with no lighting crew.

So I did the next best thing: I pulled the iPhone 11 Pro out of my pocket and started clicking off shots, imagining a Sheetz marketing executive being thrilled with the beauty behind their signage.

For the record, I have not enhanced these photographs in any way to make them look any differently than what I captured with my iPhone. I used the built-in camera app native to the iPhone. That’s it.

Unbelievable, right? The light. The shiny pavement. The reflections. Everything looked so perfectly commercial.

Maybe you’re thinking, “It’s a gas station, dude. Relax.”

But you gotta understand that if you tried— if you planned to shoot on any given day with a film crew showing up hours in advance to set up, prep the scene, place lights around, get the cars ready, etc., and crossed your fingers that the sky looked good, there would be a less than 1% chance you’d ever be lucky enough to get this sky.

You’d shoot whatever boring sky existed that day and, with additional production dollars, add new, prettier skies in post production.

By the way, 10 minutes after these shots were taken, the look returned to normal. It was a beautiful moment to remember and I’m now glad I pulled out my phone to remember it by.