Court Of The Patriarchs

To shoot this I wedged myself in between a couple of boulders right at the edge of the water. I used a 6 stop ND filter plus a 3 stop ND grad.

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Panorama Of The Patriarchs

The workshop group stopped here for a moment and I took the opportunity to try and capture a panorama.

My tripod had no bubble level, so I had to wing it with leveling. I got close but ended up with a pretty severe crop after Lightroom merged the images. The peaks crowd the top of the frame a bit, and I lost some of the lovely little river in the foreground. Lesson learned: Shoot panos in portrait mode.

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Virgin River at Big Bend

Photographing Zion can be challenging. Yes, it's in-your-face gorgeous everywhere you might point a camera, but the lighting can be difficult when the sun is directly hitting stuff. Lots and lots of contrast.

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Temple Of Sinawava

An easy walk brings you to this nice spot next to the Virgin River. The red rock walls rise up dramatically and contrast with the fall foliage.

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Great White Throne

I can't resist calling it Great White Zit. Sorry.

This was an interesting scene, right next to the Virgin River at Big Bend. This spot is almost directly below Angel's Landing, which is about a million feet up the red cliff on the right. You could see suicidal idiots traversing the trail waaaaaay up there.

The zit changed color dramatically as the sun moved across the sky. It was fun to watch and photograph.

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Canyon Overlook at O Dark Thirty

This was a cold and windy viewpoint directly over this humungous rock arch. You have to get up early to beat the photographers and tourists.

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Canyon Overlook at sunrise

In Canyonlands along the White Rim trail, I frequently looked at the surrounding cliffs and marveled, "what idiot put a road up THAT?".

Here some crazy idiots tried to build roads, I'm sure, straight up the cliffs, to terrify future travelers, but it was just too steep even for them. So they built this crazy ass tunnel 20 feet behind the cliff face on the left side. The tunnel is 1.1 miles long and curves to follow the cliff. It's narrow and drops several hundred feet along its length. Portholes were basted out in some places so you can see the facing cliffs as you drive through the darkness.

The rangers close the road to let RVs through in single file. Some RV pilots fail to straddle the centerline and shave the tops of their vehicles on the sides of the tunnel. You can see the scrapes.

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In The Narrows