You’d think by looking at this photo that Braden Young had photographed the couple in the middle of the sun-drenched Sahara desert, but they had actually ventured to Utah’s version of this exotic locale: the Little Sahara Sand Dunes.

The three of them had been out in the sunny dunes for over an hour when this shot happened, a pre-visualized frame that popped into Young’s mind suddenly—just as the sun threatened to duck below the horizon line completely.

“I asked them if they could quickly scale one more sand dune for me, because at that point, we were losing light very quickly,” he recalls. “Right as they reached the top of the dune, I instructed them [where to look] and the last rays of golden light hit them perfectly.” Young pushed the shutter and got this frame, in the very nick of time. “Before I knew it, the sun went down completely and we lost that magical golden light.”

Check out more Photos of the Day, and email submissions to RF’s senior editor at libby.peterson@emeraldx.com.