Red Rock Fix

Our original plan for last weekend was a camping trip to Sedona, but some work stuff came up and forced a change in the schedule.  Probably we'll head out that way sometime in June and expand it into a longer trip. There is a particular ruin up towards Arches that I have been wanting to shoot,  and my wife wants to go to Arches, so we'll see if we can make it that far next trip.
In the meantime, I'm revisiting a few more favorites from last Fall in southern Utah. Another one here of amazing red rock goodness from Snow Canyon... shot with my Mamiya on 6x7 medium format Velvia.

More Red Rock Textures

Another from my last stop in Utah, just after the heavy rains. Love the complex, layered textures of the red rock accented by this neat little reflecting pool. I made quite a few shots with this uniquely-shaped white rock mountain on the horizon.. that impressed me right away a perfect eye-catching element for the background.

SkyWatch: Pools in the Rock

I think I mentioned before that driving out to this site was through a torrential rain that let up, luckily, just as I was arriving.  As a result, I had quite a few opportunities to use these many temporary reflecting pools as an unusual subject matter out here in the petrified red sand dunes. I wanted to use my grad ND filter to knock down the sky, but it kept spitting rain off and on and getting all over the filter, so I had to stick with just a lens hood to somewhat keep water spots off the lens, and then try to catch the moments when the sky was less bright. Shooting with film, I lost a number of frames to bad exposure because of that, but that's the way it goes sometimes. The multi-tiered erosion almost makes this look like a deliberately landscaped pool, don't you think?

Orange Swirl - Snow Canyon

This is a view from up on the petrified dunes, as seen from a distance in my last post's panorama. After the heavy rain, I had lots of nice little reflecting pools of water to work with, which was a rare treat in a normally bone dry location such as this. Challenging though to balance the sky, constantly changing from dark to very bright, with the rocky foreground.. especially shooting with film and a manual light meter. For those of you who have only ever worked with a high tech digital camera, working with a low-tech (or in this case, "no-tech") camera is a considerably slower experience, and in the situations of constantly changing light, you have to really be on your toes. Have to be aware of the smaller dynamic range too, but when you get it right.. wow. This one is a full frame scan of a glorious sheet of 4x5 Velvia. To me at least, no digital photo will ever be as satisfying as getting one of these babies back from the processor.