I’m home. We walked through Fiery Furnace yesterday morning. The nice thing was we didn’t have to get up so early – we did a normal 7:30 departure (actually 7:40 since I held everyone up checking out). The not so nice thing was it was friggin cold. A storm came in the night before and the sky was a lead grey when we went through Park Avenue. I got one really nice shot from there. I haven’t gone through the rest yet. Anyway, it rained over night – just a bit – and cleared the sky very nicely. But it left a bitter cold wind behind. So we bundled and wandered. I’ve downloaded those shots but haven’t looked through them yet.

We did our final review, which like all of them was great. Then goodbyes and headed for home. The drive was uneventful and I got home, got back in the car to drive Rachel somewhere and mowed the lawn. So much for my artistic aura.

Here’s my last group of pictures that we reviewed yesterday. I’ll go through the last couple of batches and post any that look decent in the next couple of days.

(click an image to see it full size)

This was on the first day, on the back side of the Windows as the sun was coming up.

This is Pine Tree Arch in Devils Garden. It was the first one on the hike. Hit it just at sunrise.

This is a pano I did of Delicate Arch. It was an amazing arch – way bigger than I thought it was (huge captures the thought better) but it’s hard to do anything new with it. I like the pano, but the overall image needs some work.

This is on the walk back down from Delicate Arch.

This is Pine Tree Arch in Devils Garden.

This is another view of Double Arch, looking up.

I took these two on the way up to Double O Arch in Devils Garden. I was getting tired of arches and started fixating on texture details. I like them both but the second one needs some work.

This is the one shot I’ve pulled out of our walk through Park Avenue. The light was seriously strange that night due to the storm coming in. This one was a great texture shot.

And this was an accident that worked. I think I was clearing a bracket. That would be a shadow of my skinny leg. At least it spares you the glowing white nature of the subject leg.

As I mentioned before I’ll go through my last couple of batches and see if there is anything worth sharing.

Also, some time this next week I’m going to port this over to my hosted server and redirect the traffic from here to there. If you come by while that is happening you might get a link to the new site. When that is done I’ll be able to do much more interesting stuff and do it with a great deal less effort.

Sometime after that, and probably overlapping a bit, I’ll go through the entire shoot, pick out the better images, many of which you’ve seen here, work them better and put together a more polished presentation of the entire experience.

I’m also going to put together a produce/publish schedule that will (I hope) push me into keeping the muse alive and going. This weekend was great and I’d like to keep the momentum going, despite being home with all of the challenges that provides.

Hope you enjoy these.

This will be short – but I’ll post some pictures. Got in last night at 10:30 – up at 4:00. Now it is 11:30 and I have to be up at 4:30. I haven’t had much time to post. It’s been fun, but a lot of work. Have some decent pictures to show for it.

Here you go:

These are from Goblin Valley Last night:

This is in Canyon Lands this morning:

This is from Window Arch in Arches:

This is a view of Double Arch in Arches:

Night

I survived the trip. I had one exciting moment when a semi blew a tire just as he was going by me. Thought someone had shot something.

The car ran great – my biggest challenge was staying reasonably close to the speed limit. It handles VERY nice. Really like this machine. Here’s a shot of it just outside of Moab.

Mom told me that I should check out Dead Horse Point. She said it was really impressive. So, after I got settled and wandered around town I jumped back into the car and headed up. Got there about 6:30. Wandered around a little then made my way over to the west side, set up and watched the sun go down, taking a few pictures every few minutes so it looked like I had a purpose in being there. I did – but I mostly enjoyed just sitting there listening to the wind and the birds and watching the shadows grow, define then disappear.

Here’s my view point while I was sitting and watching.

This is a shot I took when I first arrived, looking east off of Dead Horse Point. This little spire caught my fancy.

More to come.

Now I need to get to bed. I have to be ready to go at 5:00 am. ugh.

As immediatly after work as possible I’m throwing the camera bag and some worn out clothes into my trunk and heading south to Moab/Arches and what ever else is down there. I’m going to wander around in the desert with a famous photograpic artist and take pictures of rocks. And I’m going to have fun, **mn it.

I’ll try to post at least once a day with some images. So stay tuned, maybe it will be worth it.