Double Arch At Midnight
I am still recovering after one of the most crazy and unpredictable photography trips that I have been on thus far. Eric Gail, David Columbo and I had been planning on a blitz style, four day trip out to Utah and Arizona for a couple of months, and the original plan was to drive out to Escalante and then hike down into Coyote Gulch to catch some fall color around the waterfalls and some shots of the Jacob Hamblin Arch. Having rented a 4x4 SUV specifically for this purpose, we would then make a beeline South and make the perilous drive out to the Toroweap Overlook on the rim of the Grand Canyon to catch a sunrise on Oct 30.
Well...David got sick and had to bail, our 4x4 SUV turned out to be a weenie Ford Exploder with a total front end clearance of 4 inches, and Eric's foot fell off. Or at least he WANTED it to fall off as he had some sort of horrible bone spur and could barely put any weight on it. On top of that, the clouds moved in when we arrived and we were looking at a possibility of thunderstorms on the following Friday which meant no trip to the gulch unless we wanted to deal with flash floods. And Toroweap was out due to our weenie SUV.
Fast forward two days later after we bailed on Coyote Gulch, shot Capitol Reef, got lost on the way to Canyonlands, went to Monument Valley instead, and finally raced back up to Arches where we spent our last sunset and sunrise shooting like mad before heading home.
This particular shot is from a last ditch effort to grab some night shots despite the clouds that had moved in blocking our view of the stars. I had just given up hope when I glanced up and saw that some weak starlight was beginning to make it's way through. Eric and our new friend Scott Wakefield charged up the trail only to find that the whole area had been taken over by someone working on a time lapse. After some key negotiating skills by Eric, the other photographer agreed to let us place some low level LED panels in the foreground and the result is what you see above. Eric has been experimenting quite a bit lately with a technique used by Royce Bair which involves the use of low light sources rather than the typical light painting with a flashlight that many photographers use.. The above shot was lit by three LED panels. If you were standing in front shooting, you would barely notice the dim glow on the arches, but after a 20-30 second exposure, the arches show up nicely against the stars in the background.
I took this shot with the Rokinon 12mm 2.8 fisheye after Scott and I crawled up into the cavern about 20-30 feet from where the rest of the ever growing group of photographers was stationed back at the bottom. Settings were ISO 2500, for 20 seconds at 2.8.
Even though our final itinerary looked very different from what it was when we set off at 12:30 AM on October 27, I had an amazing time visiting several locations for the first time. It might take a full twelve hours of driving to get back there again, but I can’t wait for the next trip.
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Thank you so much for your views and comments! If you have specific questions please be sure to send me a message via flickr mail, or feel free to contact me via one of the following:
Blog | Website | Facebook | Instagram | 500px | Twitter | Google +
Double Arch At Midnight
I am still recovering after one of the most crazy and unpredictable photography trips that I have been on thus far. Eric Gail, David Columbo and I had been planning on a blitz style, four day trip out to Utah and Arizona for a couple of months, and the original plan was to drive out to Escalante and then hike down into Coyote Gulch to catch some fall color around the waterfalls and some shots of the Jacob Hamblin Arch. Having rented a 4x4 SUV specifically for this purpose, we would then make a beeline South and make the perilous drive out to the Toroweap Overlook on the rim of the Grand Canyon to catch a sunrise on Oct 30.
Well...David got sick and had to bail, our 4x4 SUV turned out to be a weenie Ford Exploder with a total front end clearance of 4 inches, and Eric's foot fell off. Or at least he WANTED it to fall off as he had some sort of horrible bone spur and could barely put any weight on it. On top of that, the clouds moved in when we arrived and we were looking at a possibility of thunderstorms on the following Friday which meant no trip to the gulch unless we wanted to deal with flash floods. And Toroweap was out due to our weenie SUV.
Fast forward two days later after we bailed on Coyote Gulch, shot Capitol Reef, got lost on the way to Canyonlands, went to Monument Valley instead, and finally raced back up to Arches where we spent our last sunset and sunrise shooting like mad before heading home.
This particular shot is from a last ditch effort to grab some night shots despite the clouds that had moved in blocking our view of the stars. I had just given up hope when I glanced up and saw that some weak starlight was beginning to make it's way through. Eric and our new friend Scott Wakefield charged up the trail only to find that the whole area had been taken over by someone working on a time lapse. After some key negotiating skills by Eric, the other photographer agreed to let us place some low level LED panels in the foreground and the result is what you see above. Eric has been experimenting quite a bit lately with a technique used by Royce Bair which involves the use of low light sources rather than the typical light painting with a flashlight that many photographers use.. The above shot was lit by three LED panels. If you were standing in front shooting, you would barely notice the dim glow on the arches, but after a 20-30 second exposure, the arches show up nicely against the stars in the background.
I took this shot with the Rokinon 12mm 2.8 fisheye after Scott and I crawled up into the cavern about 20-30 feet from where the rest of the ever growing group of photographers was stationed back at the bottom. Settings were ISO 2500, for 20 seconds at 2.8.
Even though our final itinerary looked very different from what it was when we set off at 12:30 AM on October 27, I had an amazing time visiting several locations for the first time. It might take a full twelve hours of driving to get back there again, but I can’t wait for the next trip.
--------------
Thank you so much for your views and comments! If you have specific questions please be sure to send me a message via flickr mail, or feel free to contact me via one of the following:
Blog | Website | Facebook | Instagram | 500px | Twitter | Google +