Happiness Is…
….hiking The Narrows with family. I told you earlier that I had to thank my brother for taking the hike with me, for without him I probably would not have went and explored this fantastic place.
About half way back we decided to stop and chill for a minute so I turned the camera towards us to have a record of this great day. Thanks Chris…. hope we can go back sometime soon.
More Primitive…
Decided to continue with my primitive series from Zion and in this shot my brother and I have turned back and headed home. Another 3-4 miles to go, although I never dreaded any moment of it.
Again I marveled at the sheer scale of the formations that make up The Narrows. Here, with the inclusion of some fellow hikers, you can get a real sense of the massiveness(?) of the rock formations in Zion.
BTW, we couldn’t of asked for better conditions for our hike up the Virgin River. The air temperature was probably 68, the water temperature the same. The cliffs are so high that the sun never fully heats up your surroundings for very long so temperatures never varied at any point during our hike. Although, now that I look back, we never checked the weather, nor even figured in that it could be raining miles and miles away causing flash floods in the river where we were hiking. With absolutely no where to climb the results would be disastrous…………. Sometimes ignorance is bliss…..although quite dangerous!
Processed in photomatix from 5 exposures and finished in Lightroom with much dodging and burning to sustain as much of the original feel as possible.
Primitive…
I dug up this shot from back in June but that’s not what makes it primitive. I should explain before those angry stretching theme critics have their say…..
I decide to post this shot for the primitive theme because of the pervasive mood that The Narrows emanates when experienced firsthand. The geography of Zion and it’s surroundings was formed approximately 150 million years ago. Human habitation by way of the Mormons began in 1858 and was settled in the early 1860′s. Now certainly the features of the landscape have changed over the course of a few thousand years but all in all, next to the American Museum of Natural History, this is as close to primitive as I’m ever gonna get.
This is a picture of our turn-around point(about 3-4 miles in) during our hike up The Narrows in Zion NP. We certainly didn’t want to turn back but the wives and kids were waiting. Regardless, I can’t begin to explain the sense of awe I experienced during this hike. With every twist and turn of the river, rock formation after rock formation, I couldn’t wait to see what was next. The landscape is like no other I’ve ever seen.
I hope to be able to show you a few more shot of our decent back down the Virgin River in the next week or so. BTW if you missed them, a few other posts in Zion can be seen here, here, and here. Or just go to the bottom of the home page , look for Zion under the tags footer.
One other thing I need to do is again thank my brother Chris for partnering up with me on this hike for if he didn’t commit, I probably would not have experienced this magnificent place. Thanks Chris!
Brown…
Back into the archives for this theme….. I remember my brother telling me about the brown roads of Zion and found only one shot in my catalog that shows the wonderful color. It’s ironic because I was recently reading a forum in which one of the threads was to post your best road shots, boy there were some awesome shots in there and I only wish I would have taken one in Zion…..maybe next time.
I believe that’s the Human History Museum building at the foot of those massive rock formations, of which I can’t figure out which they are….sorry. Anyway, you do get a glimpse of how well the road blends with it’s environment. Who knew brown was such a great color(maybe UPS knows a thing or two about that?!).
Perspective…
My brother couldn’t figure out why I was pointing the camera out the window (and taking pictures) of the shuttle while returning to the park entrance at Zion. He asked me if we were moving too fast to get any decent pictures. My response….. you never know! Well this one is not perfect but not bad for being taken out of that bus window moving at 25mph.
Remember, if your using a digital camera it doesn’t cost any more to experiment by taking more pictures of all kinds of shots, in all kinds of conditions. I may have taken 30 shots in that moving busbut managed to get 2-3 keepers. Not bad for you never know!
Shot with a Canon XTI at f3.5, 1/1000 sec, iso 100 and 17mm
Mixed Feelings….
There are times when nature provides a stunning color palette for all the world to see, and certainly Zion is one of those places. But I also believe many of these extraordinary places can be fantastic to look at from a monochrome perspective(although Ron might not agree!).
What do you think? You’ve seen my other Zion shots in full color, are these visually more appealing? I’m thinking of framing these as a triptych, yes no, can you do that with 2 landscape perspectives and 1 vertical perspective? Let me know….
In Shadows II…
Sometimes you just have to tell your family that you’ll meet them later……. This was one shot I had to get and I needed time to get everything set-up properly to make it work. I also didn’t know how much time I had before I lost the sun. This shot of The Watchman(?) and the Virgin River was difficult because of the extreme range of light…..I think I fell one shot short on the bright end to making this perfect.
In Shadows….
Came upon this scene at the very beginning of our hike in The Narrows. Another example of the harsh lighting conditions I experienced while photography Zion. I’ve been utilizing the Fuse feature of Photomatix to maintain the natural look of these shots. Managed to get the silky water through an f13, 4sec setting on my camera.
Tiny…
At 6’4″ I generally, with the exception of a few professional basketball players, never feel tiny. But when you walk through the canyons of The Narrows in Zion you are a mere speck in the prodigious landscape of this park. These hikers definitely provide the viewer with a clear perspective of the theme.
This was about as far as my brother and I could walk before we had to meet up with the rest of our families. It was approx 3 miles into the 13 mile hike, we hated to stop because as you can see, every few hundred yards there was another bend in the river and I always wanted to see what was on the other side. Plus it appeared to be getting more and more narrow……I keep thinking about those signs posted everywhere……BEWARE…flash floods are always possible!!!!!!
Depth of Field…
Shooting Zion….. how hard could it be? You have fantastic scenery, great colors, beautiful skies, moving water, wildlife, you’ve got it all! Well, it turned out to be much more difficult than I thought. You see, the dynamic range of light within the park was off the charts. No way a single exposure could ever cover the range of light I experienced in most shots. In fact, even after several hours of shooting I still missed some great scenes because I didn’t bracket enough shots.
The big decision was to bring or not bring the tripod. After some observation of the conditions, I think I need it. After my family gives me grief, I better not bring it. And the decision is???????????????????? Bring it! And I’m glad I did because 90% of the shots I took required multiple exposures. This shot is a composite of 4 bracketed exposures which required quite a bit of processing. And this isn’t even the most extreme conditions I encountered. After all my thoughts were focused on how many brackets to take I totally forgot about depth of field, so at f8 I’m thinking that I could have gotten more of the scene in focus with something like f16.
Looking back on shooting Zion…..I learned quite a bit about how difficult it can be to shoot this “easy to shoot” natural wonder.
Sky II….Deja Vu(?)
We’ve all had those moments when you feel like you’ve seen or been somewhere before, right? Well this was one of the moments, for only a few weeks before arriving at Zion, I saw this shot of the same market while scouring flickr. Me, being a HDR fan, saw that shot and it became an instant flickr fav. Here I am only weeks later taking essentially the same shot. My version isn’t quite as good but again it’s exactly the way I remember it and I like the end result. Thanks for the inspiration Shineylewis……. So when you peruse the internet for pictures of places you think you’ll never visit…….think again.
Sky….
I really like the header photo but that and the post together were just too much. This is the Cable Mountain Lodge I was talking about in the last post. The next morning my brother and I wanted to go hike The Narrows which is a 35 minute shuttle ride so we got up early and this is the sky presented to us that morning. This is exactly how I remember it, another WOW and off we went!
The Great Outdoors….
Wow, after spending a great week and a half in Vegas we decided to take a trip to Zion National Park. The night before leaving for Utah we found a fantastic lodge that was literally steps from the main entrance to the park. We turned a corner behind the hotel and walked over a small bridge and this was our first look at Zion. Everybody just stopped and stared at The Watchman mountain. What a scene!
