After the less than perfect conditions last night, we woke up to some pretty nice skies to go along with this incredible place. Leaving the hotel at 4 this morning got us to the park before just about anybody. It’s really special to wander about under the most beautiful sky, absolutely alone ….. except for Steve. Our plan was to start at double arch while we still had some night skies, shooting up from underneath. while we may have been the only people out there, we had plenty of company, small critters scurrying about and finally, a pack of coyotes calling back and forth. Pretty special!
As the sun came up and we lost the night sky, we moved just a short distance to the east to turret arch and the north and south windows. With a plan already in mind, we hiked up and through the north window so we could shoot through the window to turret arch. Mind you it was still pretty dark when we started our little trek. Picking our way down and then back up to a small ledge we were able to get the perfect view of turret arch through the north window. Now, just wait for the sun.
If you look closely into the image – make it bigger by clicking on it – you can make out the silhouette of a person standing in the light, left of the arch itself. It kinda gives you a little perspective of the scale of everything here. I must confess though that while we were shooting this there was a steady stream of people walking around inside the arch, photographing the sunrise which is to our backs. I took a little poetic license and made them disappear in processing this image. Trust me, they didn’t feel a thing! Needless to say the hike out was a ton easier in the light, it seemed so much more challenging when it was dark.
And finally, this may be my favorite shot of the morning. I turned 90 degrees from the shot above to capture this formation. On the right edge of the image is the south window and way in the background under a mantle of clouds are the La Sal mountains. All in all a very successful morning but most of all we had such a good time just getting to where we could photograph!
Be sure to click on these images, you don’t want to miss the larger versions!