Tag Archives: zion

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

First Light, Red Rock Cliffs

May 18, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

First morning light shines on plants along a red rock ridge at the base of a cliff-lined amphitheater in the Kolob Canyons area of Zion National Park

This photograph was made in the Kolob Canyon area of Zion National Park, a less-developed area of the park, accessed by a dead-end road and with virtually no services aside from a small ranger station near the entrance. Being a good distance from the main, popular destination of Zion Canyon, far fewer people seem to visit this area. We visited on a very cold fall morning, arriving well before the sun light had worked its way down into the canyons.

In may places there are very tall cliffs to the east, and sometimes, as here, they form amphitheaters of red rock. As we came to this part of the canyon, the sun had risen high enough that some of its light was able to find a way down into the canyon and begin to pick off ridges, aretes, and bit of vegetation – though the main cliffs still remained in shadow.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cliffs, Morning Light

May 11, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Immense cliffs in the Pine Creek Canyon area of Zion National Park.

This was an interesting morning, as much for its place in the sequence of events on this trip to photograph in Utah as for the actual photographic opportunities. I have noticed, and other photographers I’ve spoken with about this seem to agree to at least some extent, that there is sometimes a sort of “getting up to speed” element to certain types of shooting when you are getting started. I recall mentioning this to one photographer friend in the context of a discussion about the idea that you should always have a clear vision for your photograph before you make it – a theoretical concept that most photographers I know acknowledge to be unrealistic and perhaps even a bad idea. (This is not to say that thinking about what your “capture” may look like as a photograph is unimportant, but rather an acknowledgement that things are often more complex than the simplistic notion suggests and that sometimes we, quite honestly, don’t really know for sure which images will work or why.) When the idea of waiting for a really good image before making a photograph came up, I shared the observation that I sometimes have to “prime the pump” but simply starting to make some photographs, even if I’m not convinced that the first ones will be great. (One friend then referred to this as “photographic foreplay.” ;-)

The previous day we had driven to St. George, Utah from the San Francisco Bay Area – a LONG drive – and finally stumbled into a motel in St. George close to midnight. (As I recall, the motel advertised something like “The Cheapest Rooms in St. George!”) Up in the morning for precisely the free breakfast that you might expect in such a place – I resisted and instead walked across the street to a Starbucks – we left early and headed into Zion. As I recall we did not spend much, if any, time in Zion Canyon, and we were soon heading up the Mount Carmel highway, still having made no photographs. Finally, as we turned a few switchbacks on the initial climb, we saw some interesting light on the cliffs across the canyon, pulled over, got our cameras and lenses and tripods and made some photographs. I’m not sure that any of them were exactly remarkable, but with this first “shoot” (priming the pump) our work was now underway.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cliffs and Fog, Morning

May 5, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cliffs of Zion Canyon emerge from morning fog

This is a somewhat different photograph of a scene that I previously shared. The earlier version featured a closer view of the pinnacle near the right of this frame – this one backs off a bit and shows more of the overall cliff face. We had arrived at Zion National Park the previous day, coming across Arizona in very rainy weather to enter this park in light rain in the afternoon. On the way over the Mount Carmel Highway to Springdale, where we would stay that night, we had photographed the wet high country sandstone as the rain came to an end.

On this morning the clouds from that rain storm had not quite left as we rode one of the very early shuttles into Zion Canyon with a plan to photograph further up the canyon. But as the shuttle entered the lower canyon I was intrigued – as I always am! – but mist and clouds swirling around the upper slopes of the canyon walls. Aside from the much more colorful red rock here, the scene reminded me a lot of what I frequently see in Yosemite Valley during stormy weather. The timing was just right in relation to the clouds and the light. As the sun came up behind my camera position, the clouds had cleared over the center of the valley allowing the morning light to shine under the mist swirling around the upper cliff face, so while the highest ridge was still darkened by the clouds, the lower face was increasingly lit by the morning light as the clouds rose and began to clear away.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Autumn Leaves, Layered Sandstone with Diagonal Crack

April 6, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small plant with yellow autumn leaves grows from a diagonal crack in wall of layered sandstone, Zion National Park

I’ll start off by admitting that I now don’t recall exactly where I made this photograph on this day when we visited Zion National Park. I’m virtually certain that it in the high country along the Mt. Carmel Highway that crosses the park from east to west, but where on that highway I’m not certain. Of course, some crack in the rock with a bush growing out of it hardly is likely to be an iconic, named location!

What I do recall is that we spent a good portion of this first trip’s first day in Zion along this road, and to some extent driving back and forth along it a few times, watching for new subjects as the day’s light evolved. At times a cliff that had been in sun earlier in the day would be in shadow later, so we had a choice to photograph in soft light or harsh. All along this roadway there were the usual interesting subjects – sedimentary rock formations of all sorts and all colors – but also at this time of year the fall color show was beginning. I believe that this little vignette might have been down in one of the washes or slot canyons that we dropped into in search of this color.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: zion

First Light, Red Rock Cliffs

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Cliffs, Morning Light

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Cliffs and Fog, Morning

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Autumn Leaves, Layered Sandstone with Diagonal Crack

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.