Crack Canyon, San Rafael Swell Utah

This is the first of a 4 part post on a trip I took with 12 young men (Ages 14-18) and 5 adults from our church to the San Rafael Swell in south Central Utah as a High Adventure activity.

This area also includes Goblin Valley State Park, which is one of the funkiest natural formations I have ever seen. This first post consists of the photo's taken once the three of us in the advance party set up camp, texted off the GPS co-ordinates, and decided it was time to play. None of us had ever been in Crack Canyon, and were glad we went, it was a good example of the type.

The upper Canyon with the path/streambed. (Please click on the Photos to enlarge them)

These dead Junipers are everywhere in the area and are full of character.

There were several seeps in the bottom of the canyon, and they all stank, this water was pretty sulfurous but made for nice framing of the butte.

One of my favorite visual aspects of water carved areas, is the sweep or curve of a bend. These often lead your eye to the distance and (to me) increase the vastness of the area. Sometimes in the city you forget exactly how BIG open country can be.

I also LOVE this type of weathering, Swiss cheese rock is just so cool to look at!

This undercut makes me nervous and yet awed all together. How much water had to flow past here to cut that away? How long did it take? Will it collapse as I walk underneath it? You can't think that last one much if you want to be comfortable in a slot canyon.

I loved the play of light in this alcove.

This is "Desert Varnish" what you see streaking vertical walls of sandstone in the desert, my understanding is that it is a combination of iron oxide being pulled from the rock (That is why it is red ya know) and lichens/bacteria. You will see it in many of my photo's if you look closely.

This is probably my FAVORITE shot from the day, those two at the bottom are Mike and George, the two characters I went down with.

As the day progressed the cloud cover got interesting, and I got even MORE interested! These next few shots are as pared down as I can make them, I get all gushy just looking at them, and want to post them ALL, but I will spare you looking at multiple shots that have only slight framing differences. They are all taken on the way back out the upper part of the canyon. We were hiking late in the day and it was quite difficult to photograph in the shadows of a north/south canyon with the sun lowering in the western sky.

This 4 shot panorama is testament to the adage of "Never forget to look behind you when shooting a sunset!" The delicate light on the clouds warms my heart!

Here is what I was looking at before I turned around.

A fittingly beautiful end to a gorgeous day, out in the desert.

Star Trails

I have long had a desire to photograph star trails, but have had difficulty really making it work. I was quite pleased to get these results. These shots are actually in reversed order, but how would you know unless I told you?

The process of taking a star trail is simple in theory and hard to execute in real life. All you need is a sturdy tripod and camera and a shutter release that you can lock and hold the shutter open as long as you want to, the amount of star movement is directly related to how long the shutter is open and where the camera is pointed.

This shot is aimed somewhat east of north, with true north just out of the frame to the left. Which gave me the maximum amount of star movement. I find myself wondering if it would be possible to stitch 2-3 of these guys together and have one photo with both true north and true south in the frame...... hmmm.... (Do click on the photo to enlarge it it is much easier to see the stars that way.)

This was my first shot of the night, the light is coming from a campfire and coleman lantern combination. It was approximately 30 minutes of exposure.

Morning at Camp and Little Wild Horse Canyon

I am an inveterate early riser, especially when camping, the early morning light is often the best of the day, and I usually get it to myself too! This is the southeastern edge of the San Rafael Swell, taken from inside our campsite. Just after dawn. (As always, click on the Photo's to see larger versions)

The folding and carving of the land is beautiful to behold and I can just sit and look at it for hours. This is a sere and dry land, starkly beautiful, where the only things that survive are the tough ones.

This is just behind (South) of our camp, we were in what I call a "Dirt" camp, on BLM land, which means that it is not maintained or serviced, but used and established without government interference. The best part is the folks that camp out there seem to do a very good job of cleaning up after themselves, there was no trash or littering around. A few yahoo's with ATV's had driven over the sign that said no motorized vehicles, but fortunately had not gone into this area much at all.
Even in the middle of nowhere, you can still see the transitory signs of man. I was amazed at how many airplane contrails were in the sky that morning.

After cleaning up camp we headed to my favorite slot canyon, Little Wild Horse. Now you may be asking yourself at this point, where are the people you were with? Well, I make it a policy to not post people expecially kids pictures on here, it is too easy to save these photos, and I do post the largest size allowed (for your viewing pleasure) and I would prefer to not have some kids parent coming to me ticked off that someone stole their kids head and put it on a website somewhere.

This is an old friend, but easier to negotiate than in the past, a LOT of sand was washed out of this canyon this winter/spring.

This pour off was easier to negotiate than it looks, but was not there last year, if I remember correctly this area was under sand when I hiked this last August.

This is the last 1/4-1/2 mile of the canyon, it is COMPLETELY changed from last year. I am kind of glad I wasn't there to get killed as the water pushed through here, there are LARGE boulders that have newly fallen and this stream bed has produced a lot of new rock. Wish I could have photographed it from a safe place though. There were areas that were 100ft wide and showed signs of 10+ft of water having gone through...

Heading back downcanyon towards the light made for some beautiful golden glow from around corners.

I am still looking for last years photo's but last year there was sand much higher than in this shot.

This is more in the nature of an experimental processing of this shot. Not in love with it, but at the same time it is interesting to see it differently than in real life.

Another Trip to Goblin Valley

At the end of the hike, we drove from Little Wild Horse to Goblin Valley State Park, to use the facilities, eat lunch, and let the boys play in the Hoodoo's. As I said before, Goblin Valley is one of my favorite places on earth. This time around I wanted to shoot with an eye towards B&W conversions. I think I got some reasonably fun shots. (As always, click on the Photo to enlarge it!)

This one I left Color, mainly because I could not find a processing look I was happy with.....

One Fine Sunset

Whilst in the midst of driving home from work the storm clouds began to clear, as I made my way home I prayed for the sunset to hold for me. It did. I may not have had the time to linger and get fancy, but what I got I like.

The Metal Man Again
I will rule the world!! Ha Ha Ha!!! Me and my weathervane shall subdue you and grind you underfoot.

Easter Eggs....

Saturday was my families annual egg dyeing day, silly me bought brown eggs instead of white eggs, but we agreed that "Jewel Tones" were kinda cool too!

All images but the last taken with Pentax SMC 135mm f2.5 manual focus lens and bounced flash manual metering.

Wabbit egg

Big green S
Diagonally
Empty Rack
Rows of Jewels
The Setting

The First Flowers of the Year!!!

I have been watching these guys for a few weeks, just waiting for them to open up. Finally when we went over to my parents on Sunday they were blooming... well one of them was! I set up my new tripod (more about that in a sec) and tried for a few shots. Not wanting the kids to be running amok without me for too long I didn't linger but was impressed at the versatility of my tripod.

These first two have had my standard post processing done.

This one I believe is an untouched original... I think....

Here is my tripod, it is really really cool, the center column can tip over and get really really close to the ground. I could have gone lower and shot up into this flower if it had been taller and the light was co-operating. For those that care it is an Induro AX 213 6M Alloy tripod with a Vanguard SBH-300 Ball head.

Two slightly different takes on B&W

OK, an hour and a half later here is what I was able to do in Black and White... which I rather like! Though the first a little more than the second.

4 Shots of the Utah State Capitol

Alrighty, time for a story.

I had the opportunity to attend a course last Friday and Saturday at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. As I often do, I went early to take some photos, because... well... I am a photographer as well as a Physical Therapist! So Friday I went to the inside of the Capitol Building as I have once before. Except this time I had my handy dandy new Tripod which with a L-Bracket allows me to shoot Panoramas with the nodal point of my lens approximately in the same place as the center of rotation of the tripod. More about that in some other post... So, there I was all by myself at 7:00am in the Capitol rotunda getting prepared to shoot. Once I started shooting I found that the lighting was very tough and I was going to have to shoot 3 bracketed shots and process them as HDR then stitch them. So I spent the next 30 minutes shooting at 25 degree slices until I had covered the whole 360 degree angle of view. Finally on Sunday I got the opportunity to process the HDR's and loaded all 15 shots into The panorama creator in Photoshop Elements 7 and off I went... with one small problem... it locked up my poor creaky old computer. Crashed and burned!!! So you don't get to see those yet, hopefully my brothers rocking machine can handle that load.

On Saturday it was not snowing and I was able to shoot outside. I had no idea that there was a reflecting pool behind the State Capitol, seriously, no idea. Well I discovered it at my usual early hour on a cloudy Saturday and this series is about that.

My main disappointment with this shot was the massive flare from the lights. Not unexpected due to using a 10mm lens with that large and bright of light sources, but disappointing nonetheless. I may use my 17-70 in a vertical position the next time and stitch a few shots together, it has a much better flare characteristic.

This the first of two quick and dirty treatments of these shots, you see a slight haloing of the building, that is due to my quick layer cutting rather than the processing. If I thought that this had promise as a saleable shot I would definitely go back and do a much tighter mask.

Despite being a little wild and crazy (OK a LOT wild and crazy!) I like this version much better. There is just a certain drama to it. I wonder if the Capitol Police would get after me if I waded into the fountain to get closer? Hmmmm......

This lovely piece is a 180 degree panorama shot with my Sigma 10-20, it is 5 HDR shots stitched together (15 exposures total) This I am tempted to try to sell, though I may repeat the shot with a better sky and try that. I dunno....

One more just for grins!