Not far from Moab, UT lies Canyonlands National Park. Arches NP may be more popular but Canyonlands is far more scenic.
Canyonlands
We probably should have spent less time in Arches NP and much more in Canyonlands. It’s that good. And for some reason the crowds weren’t nearly as big there as in Arches. The sweeping vistas of canyon after canyon were just incredible. It was reminiscent of the Grand Canyon albeit on a smaller scale. The Park has three districts that are separated by the Colorado and Green rivers. The most accessible district is called Island in the Sky and is where the shot above is. The other two are the Maze district and the Needles district. The Maze district is quite remote with few roads and the few that are there are rough four wheel drive roads.
Mesa Arch
We spent some time scouting out several locations in the Island in the Sky district. One of the most famous is Mesa Arch. It’s a short 0.5 mile round trip hike and during the day it’s a pretty popular viewpoint. Looking through the arch onto Buck Canyon is impressive as it’s a shear drop down to the canyon floor just on the other side of the arch. During sunrise this viewpoint turns crazy with photographers trying to get “the” iconic shot. It’s so busy I didn’t even try. People start lining up in front of the arch at 4:00am. I think they sleep in their cars in the parking lot. The underside of the arch glows nicely at sunrise and you can get some nice star bursts as the sun goes behind the upper part of the arch. Classic shot. Elbow to elbow photography. Karen took a photo of the scene that morning. It’s shown below.
As you can see they’re all competing for a few square feet of real estate. To get the glow and the starburst there’s a small space you need to be in. That shot happens around 7:30-7:40am. As I mentioned, they start lining up around 4:00am. I just didn’t want to deal with that. Besides, on this particular morning there were clouds to the east. I felt the potential for nice color in the sky was pretty good and you don’t get much sky in the classic Mesa Arch shot. I set up about 100 feet to the left of the crowd looking out over Buck Canyon. Pretty nice view.
I added a neutral grad filter to lower the sky values and I still bracketed my shots. I ended up blending two shots to create the featured image at the top of the page. One shot for the sky and one for the foreground. A small aperture creates the starburst as the sun makes it’s way over the horizon. Another issue when shooting into the sun is flare in the lens. I solved this by using an earlier shot for the foreground before the sun came up. No flare. Then I blended in the shot of the sun rising over the horizon using only the sky portion of that image.
Perhaps on a return visit to Canyonlands I’ll elbow my way into the classic Mesa Arch shot. It’s just not my idea of being out in these grand landscapes though. I don’t mind shooting with other people but there are stories of people coming to blows over this shot. There’s just not a lot of space there and if you’ve waited for hours for this image you get pretty territorial. When it gets that bad I usually pass.
The featured image is available as a free wallpaper download. See the Shop page for more info.
Nikon D810 with Nikkor 16-35mm @16mm. F/11 at 1/8 sec. ISO 100
