View allAll Photos Tagged mesa
Burr Trail, Escalante National Monument, Utah.
This is a composite of four photos merged in Lightroom.
Hunts Mesa in northern Arizona is quite a religious experience as you watch the sun come up overlooking Monument Valley. I recently met a Navajo woman that lives in the top right section of this shot.
Mesa Arch Canyonlands National Park just outside of Moab, UT.
This April day was surprisingly windy and cold. A early morning venture to catch the sun lighting up the arch was a bust. Cold, and windy with complete cloud cover. Maybe tomorrow :)
While not the typical sunrise image the snow capped La Sal Mountains in the background draw your attention through the arch.
Mesa Arch is, undeniably, one of the spotlight attractions in the Island in the Sky District of Canyonlands National Park.
Canyonlands National Park, UT
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One of the highlights of the trip was visiting this very well known and thoroughly photographed place called, Mesa Arch. It has amazing sunrise views through this arch that drops off into a majestic southwestern scenery that is sought out by photographers and sightseers alike.
As the sun rises it casts a very nice, warm and nearly reddish glow just underneath and all around the arch. For this to work you need either a clear sky or a gap in the clouds near the horizon.
On this day in particular, we got quite lucky as the forecast called for nearly 100% cloud cover which could have shattered our dream shot by blocking the sun.
Luckily though we got a nice gap near the horizon that allowed the sun to burst through and warm up the scene very nicely. This spot is so popular among photographers that we actually camped out around this spot the night before to get our spots as later on we were accompanied by about 50 or so photographers and bystanders.
Thanks for stopping by!
Sunrise, Canyonlands National Park, Island in the Sky District, Utah
Note: the rock beneath this arch drops off abruptly, providing a rock face that reflects the early sun light onto the bottom of the arch for half an hour or more. So, with patience, one can get a photograph of it without the sunrise throng of people under it.
Zion National Park, Utah
A small pine tree grows out of a sandy pocket near the base of the Checkerboard Mesa.
This chunk of Navajo sandstone has roughly horizontal striping from the original crossbedding of wind blown dunes and vertical cracking accented by freeze/thaw cycles. The result is reminiscent of a checkerboard (or chessboard).
What's amazing is how the underside of the arch begins to glow well before the sun pokes up over the horizon. The glow begins on the left, then migrates across the top to the right. I couldn't investigate this without getting into everyone else's pictures. And there was a fair crowd there. The day before, there was a tour bus that beat me to it.
This is one of the iconic arches in the Arches/Canyonlands area.
I decided to try something different from the traditional shots taken here by using a fisheye lens and setting the tripod low to the ground to avoid the sun getting into the image.
This was a five image HDR.
This is probably my favorite shot from my trip.
Back in the Florida heat and humidity now. Big change.....
And words of wisdom to the traveler who may be headed out to the Moab area: Grand Junction Airport is the closest airport to the Moab Area. The Moab airport is very small and chances of getting a flight there are small. It's about 114 miles from Moab to Grand Junction. And as I learned last Saturday during my drive, there is only one restroom between Arches NP and I-70 Eastbound if you're taking US 191. That's at the freeway entrance at Crescent Junction. If you don't stop there, be warned.
From I-70 East at Crescent Junction until Exit 19 near Fruita Colorado, about 70 miles, there's not one single restroom to be found. Not even an outhouse.
So if nature calls, and you're opposed to using one of the lovely Juniper Trees which borders I-70 East in Western Colorado, you're screwed.
You've been warned. Have a great week and see you out in the field.
Caption By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor
The Anasazi lived in simple pit houses with a hearth, fire hole and room for storage. Entered through the roof by way of a ladder, the house was cool in the summer and warm in the winter because it was partly underground.
These people came together in what we call "great kivas," (See Mesa Verde 3) which were also located partly underground. "These very large (more than 100 square meters, or 1,076 square feet), round structures are thought to have been used for public gatherings during which members of the community socialized, performed ceremonies, or discussed issues important to the group," the Crow Canyon researchers wrote.
View Through Mesa Arch
Canyonlands National Park
Utah, USA
God creates the beauty. I just press the shutter button.
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I posted this shot from my last trip to the Canyonlands and Arches NP. The picture may look isolated but by 6:00 am I was surrounded on each side by a large group of photographers from around the world. More keep coming out of the darkness as the premium time was approaching. I kept making room for others until our tripods were tangled together.
I don't usually shoot in these conditions but occasionally it is kind of fun to get around a lot of people to share in the adventure of landscape photography.
We were all fortunate to get the right lighting with just the right amount of clouds to allow for a nice sunrise with plenty of sun getting through to light this beautiful arch up which it is famous for.
Update - I posted a short video to give you an idea of the controlled madness while not a word is uttered with the silence only broken by the dozens of shutters clicking along with the photographers quickly repositioning for the next shot...
Thank you for your viewing this and for sharing yours!
Sunrise at Mesa Arch...You gotta be there!
Sunrise brings up beautiful colors in this arch, like a fire lit below. I was staying in the hotel located at Moab near Canyonland national parks. I woke up an hour before sunset and drove to the arch, but in my rear-view mirror I could almost see sun rising up to horizon, and I still had to do a short hike from the parking lot to the actual arch. I park my car and almost run to the spot cursing myself and thinking I might have missed the shot, but since I was there in late spring, the sun rose over the northern mountains instead of horizon at the arch. So I got my shot :)
Lessons learned: 1. Always wake up earlier than you think you would need to.. 2. Use photographer's ephemeris or similar apps to know location of the sun or moon beforehands
A different view of Mesa Arch and the Canyonlands behind it. I wasn't sure what to do with this one, so I left it untouched on my disk for a while, but then I came back to it and decided to do an HDR to really bring out the LaSal Mountains on the horizon and the colors of the sky right before sunrise.
Maybe the post-processing is not to everybody's taste, but to each his own and you can always get more natural looking ones in my gallery here: www.ucphoto.me/Southwestern-USA/