Tag Archives: national

Soft Light, Ellery Lake

Soft Light, Ellery Lake
“Soft Light, Ellery Lake” — Ellery Lake in early morning soft light.

This spot and this view have long intrigued me. The lines and curves lead from the shoreline forest at left, past that talus-covered slope on the right, across the water to another peninsula, and finally to the massive face rising beyond. The personality of this view can change remarkably — I’ve photographed during storms, under the full moon, in direct sunlight.

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Mud Patterns

Mud Patterns
“Mud Patterns” — Colorful patterns formed in dry and cracked mud, Capitol Reef.

Recently I went through my archives to see just how many photographs of dried mud I have made over the years. It is a lot! There are perhaps a few dozen finished photographs of this subject that I have shared publicly. But there are scores of them sitting in my unprocessed raw file archives. This one, in fact, is one that I “discovered” during this search, and I’m now sharing it for the first time.

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Cliff Face in Morning Light

Cliff Face in Morning Light
“Cliff Face in Morning Light” — Warm early-morning sunlight intensifies colors and textures of a sandstone cliff, Arches National Park.

We had finished dawn photography of nearby formations on this October morning at Arches National Park. As I was working that subject I kept noticing this remarkable bit of cliff, also in the direct morning sunlight. The larger formation of which it is a part did not offer me any obvious photographic subject, so I switched to a long lens and zeroed in on the colors and textures of this small portion of the scene.

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Sandstone Terrain and Mountains

Sandstone Terrain and Mountains
“Sandstone Terrain and Mountains” — Morning haze and backlight obscures distant mountains and sandstone terrain, Arches National Park.

Arches National Park is red rock country, a landscape dominated by the colors of Southwest sandstone. Almost all of my photographs of the area are in color, for that obvious reason. It is not just the rocks themselves — the complementary greens of vegetation and the blue of the sky feature strongly, too. But this particular view, a veritable moonscape, seems to call for a monochrome interpretation.

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