Bryce Point at Night
On my southwest tour with LionTX and JohnRav a few weeks ago, one of our reasons for selecting that particular weekend months in advance was that it coincided with the full moon as well. While it's great to see all these great national parks and familiar landmarks, we wanted a chance to see them in a different light as well - specifically, moonlight.
Our all-day Bryce Canyon marathon ended at Bryce Point waiting for the full moon to rise. Being the last night of our trip it was the latest we had to wait for it to rise. We were all pretty wiped out, but we did make the trip to Bryce Point well after dark and even still had to wait a bit at the point for both the moon to come out from a heavy fog (which came out of nowhere) and to rise high enough to light the canyon. This was my final shot of that night and therefore had the greatest amount of the canyon lit in moonlight.
There is almost nothing out there, but of course even in such a remote spot you can't get away from those awful sodium vapor lamps and their ugly orange glow. The bright light to the right is around the entrance to the park itself, which has the usual collection of gas stations, inns, and restaurants.
The location itself was chosen after we saw it in late afternoon. We'd read that Sunrise and Sunset Points were the place to be for sunrise, and had read almost nothing about Bryce Point. Once we saw it though we knew it would be a great place for sunrise too, and therefore for moonrise as well.
If you're ever in southern Utah you owe it to yourself to check out this spectacular place.
You can see more photos from my Southwest photo tour with JohnRav and LionTX in our group pool here.
Nikon D40 | Sigma 10-20@18mm | f/5.6 | 333s | ISO200 | Tripod
  
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Uploaded on May 10, 2008
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Antelope Canyon, Detail
I've got so many shots from Antelope Canyon that I love, it's really tough to chose what to post. I decided to post this one this evening because it highlights some of the detail that hasn't come through in my other shots yet.
In addition to the sweeping lines of the canyon carved by erosion during flash floods, there are striations visible running up orthogonal to that up towards the sunlight. I have no idea what causes these changes in the rock's color, but that's the way it is. Looking up here towards the sunlight I found these lines to be most visible.
Having said all that I hope it's not so subtle that it seems like I'm making things up, but that's what caught my at this point in the canyon.
I also found that any point where you could capture a lot of the transition from direct sunlight at the top down to light reflected many times at the bottom you can really pick up the amazing color gradient - from oranges at the top down to deep purples at the bottom. I cropped out the very bottom of this shot, but still think a fair bit of that color gradation comes through here.
I've been a little slow on the updates this week, but more shall follow.
You can see more photos from my Southwest photo tour with JohnRav and LionTX in our group pool here.
Nikon D40 | Sigma 10-20@20mm | f/8 | 1.1s | ISO200 | Tripod
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Uploaded on May 8, 2008
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Agathla, The El Capitan of Arizona
I'm much more accustomed to shooting the El Capitan located in Yosemite, but on my trip around the southwest with LionTX and JohnRav we found another one.
On our way to Monument Valley we drove past this peak by about a mile to the west and thought about adding it to the agenda for the return trip. In the end I'm really glad we did as it was, in my opinion, sort of a photographic gem (though I really didn't 'see' its potential on the first pass).
We had to take a side road around the south side to find a good vantage point. What I like here is that the sky was still light just at the horizon towards the west as the sun had set less than an hour before. But it was mostly dark out and the full moon was at our backs (we drove to get between the peak and the moon) and that's what's lighting the peak here.
LionTX uploaded a shot with nearly identical framing, with a much shorter exposure - mine is nearly 3 minutes, and Lion pulled it off in 25 seconds and they have a very different feel. John Rav uploaded a shot taken from further west, and a little later, which shows a different angle on the peak, and I think he caught the clouds at their best.
The local Navajo know the peak as Agathla... I'm not actually sure who calls it El Capitan.
Nikon D40 | Sigma 10-20@20mm | f/8 | 160s | ISO200 | Tripod
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Uploaded on May 5, 2008
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Sandstone Chimney, Kodachrome Basin
So this is Kodachrome Basin State Park... I was a little underwhelmed. On the third day of the American Southwest tour with JohnRav and LionTX we had shot at Bryce Canyon National Park from about 6AM to 6PM. Since the canyon faces east we wanted a different sunset location to shoot at. We decided to check out the relatively nearby Kodachrome Basin State Park, as we'd read good things about it. In the end the problem was the same as all of our sunset shoots - we seemed to arrive about 20 minutes too late.
The road in the foreground was the road we drove in on, and we parked just off to the left. As we hauled off into the park I took this shot as I crossed the road, and it became my favorite. As you can see the ground is actually mostly in shadow already, and the red sandstone was just catching the last bit of light. There are some interesting structures in this park in deep red sandstone with white sandstone chimneys, but with some higher elevations blocking the sunset to the west we really needed to arrive much earlier than we did to get a chance to see it at sunset. Everything disappeared into shadow before I even got my tripod setup.
In part I'm just uploading this because I think it's the last location for which no other photos have been uploaded to our group pool.
Nikon D40 | Nikon 18-200VR@50mm | f/8 | 1/50s | ISO200 | Handheld
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Uploaded on May 4, 2008
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Yucca at Checkerboard Mesa, Night
Funny story... none of us had ever been to Zion before and we really didn't know what we were looking for. One of the prominent features in eastern Zion is called "Checkerboard Mesa" - presumably a mesa with a checkerboard texture. But we really didn't know what we were looking for. But, as we drove along in the dark we were looking for it and eventually pulled over when we thought we'd found it.
We hiked up off the road and tried to determine if it was the right spot. Since it was pretty dark out and we only had moonlight to work with we really weren't sure what we were looking at until taking some long exposures.
So we eventually decided that this was Checkerboard Mesa in the background as you could just barely make out a bit of a checkerboard patter at the bottom. Unimpressed we continued to shoot anyways. I eventually settled on relegating the actual mesa to the background and shooting these Yucca plants instead (I thought the sharp lines and shadows looking cool under moonlight).
We got back to the car (I had my tripod topple over with my camera attached leaving this behind) and we started driving again.
About 100 yards down the road was a huge pullout with a prominent sign for the Checkerboard Mesa, with a clear view of the other side with it's clear and unambiguously checkerboard-patterned surface.
D'oh.
These are mistakes you only make on your first visit I guess. I share because I care... learn from our mistakes.
Nikon D40 | Sigma 10-20@12mm | f/7.1 | 184s | ISO200 | Tripod
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Uploaded on May 3, 2008
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6 comments
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