Are Sunset Photographs Cliches?

That is what Roddy, my photography professor, called them.  And I guess if you are a photography professor, you look at hundreds and maybe thousands of sunset photographs during your career, and just get plain sick of them.  Roddy also doesn't like photographs of the golden aspens taken here in Colorado during the fall, and for the same reason.  Of course, I an not a photography professor, and have no qualms about taking both sunset and aspen photographs.  I took the photograph of the left in the parking lot of the King Sooper's Grocery store on south Colorado Boulevard here in Denver just a few days ago.  Not only is it a pretty scene, it is located almost exactly where the Hatch's Bookstore was located, in the long gone University Hills Mall, which was the bookstore I managed when I first came to Denver.  The store faced west and had huge picture windows, and so we saw some great sunsets there, too.

On the other hand, sunsets on East Colfax Avenue seem a bit grittier, even though it has been gentrified and today is far from the "longest, wicked street in America," which it allegedly was back during Jack Kerouac's time.  It is still popular with the winos and homeless, however, and if you take the East Colfax bus there is always a conversation you can overhear about the passenger's latest meeting with their parole officer.  I took the photograph on the right driving down Colfax toward Union Station.  It shows the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on the right, and the State Capitol on the left, with a little bit of a sunset looking down on the scene.  I bet Jack Kerouac would approve.  That's one.