Now that we had Kendall and all his good camping equipment, we had some decisions to make. The original plan was for us to spend some quality time with hard ground sleeping in the Canyonlands, but Rick's Hawaiian blood is apparently too thin for the cold and wind that was forcast for that area (that's how we ended up in Page in the first place). And although I hadn't mentioned it yet, we've had quite a bit of wind to this point of the trip. Not so bad shooting big rocks, but shooting flowers is challenging with them blowing all around.

We happily decided to pack up our stuff and make an overnight excursion into the Paria Plateau/Vermilion Cliffs Monument. We had our South Coyote Butte pass for today (Tuesday), and we thought we'd stop by the station and see if we could get a Wave pass for the next day in the lottery. No luck (again). There were people who had been there all week trying who went away empty handed, so I don't feel to bad. We did luck out again and had the opportunity to grab yet another day in South Coyote Butte, so we took it. The permit was cheap ($5/person/day) and this gave us some flexibility as to our plans for the various locations. 

We headed down the gravel road (GSNEM 700–House Rock Valley Road) that leads to North Coyote and South Coyote Buttes. We were treated to incredible views. We stopped a few miles in to take in this scene:

The Vermilion Cliffs is a very apt name for this area—the reds and oranges in this area are incredible! The sky was gorgeous and we had lots of puffy clouds that cast shadows dancing over the hills. We also decided to load the Jeep with some flat rocks in case we ended up getting stuck in the deep sand that we would be facing later in the trip. Our fearless leader Rick is scouring a wash for appropriate sized ones here:

Kendall was busy taking photographs of all the native wildflowers in this location (there were tons around). Not to repeat myself, but one of the most amazing aspects of this trip was getting to see all the flowering plants and shrubs around here. Just incredible.

The drive continued (with a nicely loaded Jeep). Note the repetition of the red/orange cliffs above, followed by red/orange sand hills underneath, with bentonite hills (those wacky colored and striped mounds) near the bottom. Dr. Seuss would be pleased! I was surprised we didn't trip over any Truffula trees out here…

The great thing about driving with photographers is that you stop just because you can. And this struck our fancy. It looks good in color...

But do you prefer it in B/W?

Every time we came across sage brush I had to grab a couple leaves to crush. It made me wonder where I put my roast chicken.

Another friendly cactus species... (can't remember what Rick called these).

After a while, we turned on the road to Paw Hole. This road was supposedly much more difficult to pass, but the alternative route runs an extra 20 miles south, so this cuts off a lot of traveling. Rick did great blasting us through the sand in the Jeep.

And I believe that these are the South Coyote Buttes shown below. We'll be exploring those more in the next day.

We were fortunate to block the path of a guide who was leading a small tour to White Pocket as we wondered which way to turn on the unmarked roads. It was a good thing we did ("Hi" to Susan of Paria Outfitters), because I think we would have picked the wrong road. Susan was driving a big Surburban, and she just told us to follow her and keep on the gas to get through the deep sand. We had another exciting 40 minute drive to reach our final day's destination of White Pocket: home of red sandstone and brain rock.

After eating a very filling (and well-deserved) breakfast back at Bryce, we put our gear in the Jeep and headed out. We took Route 12 (a pretty drive) through Cannonville (we hid the Sigma gear) and then got on the gravel/dirt Cottonwood Road. Our first stop was Kodakchrome Basin State Park. Nice rocks, but it was the middle of the day and I didn't see anything that struck me as being a good photograph. We continued on and hung a left to go to Grosvenor Arch. As arches go, this is a mammoth one in terms of its location, on the top of a pretty big chunk of stone.

This is the view from the bottom looking straight up it.

This was a nice diversion. We continued on for a while, (past Cottonwood Narrows and the dreaded "Nikon Man") until I started seeing some flowers that I wanted to shoot. Rick pulled over and we got our first taste of exactly how much this desert area was blooming.

It was so beautiful, I let Domo get out and stretch. You'll see how nice and clean Domo is at this point of the trip. Let's just say that by the end he'll need a bath...

So, we drove a little farther. Rick had mentioned that he wanted to shoot catci at some point, and I saw one in bloom from the car. So again, we pulled over and hiked around for an hour shooting catcus. I had brought my reflector along, and that ended up to be a good thing—we used it a surprising amount on the trip.

Here's the 'generic' hot-pink catcus that was all over the place.

And here's the 'Claret-cup' catcus:

We got ourselves catcused-out eventually, and jumped back into the Jeep. We ended up at this really interesting overlook, so a little scramble up one of the hills gave me this nice view.

Farther on, we came across this interesting area:

And we eventually ended up back on 89 near the Paria Ranger station. Rick took me across the road to shoot an old house/windmill that he had shot before. It was a great drive, but the house had been taken down and a semi container was under the windmill, so it wrecked the shot…  However, I did get to prove that I'm a Wisconsin photographer with this fine portrait.

I also snapped this in our travels.

And we finished at 'Ship Rock' to shoot a couple formations as the sun was setting.

All in all, this was a fantastic day, and the trip was really just getting started!

So, we got through the amazing tunnel(s) at Zion, and headed to Bryce to shoot the afternoon, spend the night, and shoot the next day's sunrise. But escaping Zion wasn't completely easy, because new opportunities always seemed to be cropping up. On the way I was introduced to some more amazing scenery. The southwest is big—and it's a challenge to make photographs. You just want to put a wide angle lens on and capture it all, but you end up with 'salad bowl'—a mixture of junk tossed (and lightly seasoned). Creating strong images with good composition was my biggest challenge on this trip.

Driving to Bryce. How's this for a nice diversion along the road? We're not in Kansas (or Wisconsin) anymore! Glorious colors, wonderful topology, amazing landscape. Would you ever get tired of looking at this for your back yard?

Nope. Me neither. Both these images were shot out of the car with the 18-200 OS lens (thanks Sigma USA!)

I wanted to demonstrate the 'Salad Bowl' effect (although the above images do a decent job of that). I had a nice shot, but SPP corrupted the jpg conversion. So I call this 'Salad Bowl effect–a la Jimi Hendrix'. Trippy, huh?

Back to our regularly scheduled stuff. We did most of the 'lookout' points at Bryce once we got there in the afternoon. It was strong light (too strong), beautiful clouds. Haven't yet worked these images into B/W, but there might be some keepers. I wanted to show an overlook where we worked for 30 minutes or so…

Different perspectives of the same basic area. I like them all for different reasons, but probably none of them enough to print. Ignore the pine tree branches impinging on the third shot (right side). I forgot my pruning shears. Rick was working pretty hard around here:

This is Natural Bridge, a famous arch. Frankly, I didn't do it much photographic justice, but the light was too hard. Composition is really important in landscape shots, but so is getting the right light on the subject.

How about Sunrise Point at sunset? The sandstone hoodoos light up so that they glow. This is overexposed intentionally, and I should probably crop out the left side. This one, I will print. Even if it's busy...

Thor's hammer is next. I thought it was a fist, so I named it before I looked it up. I wish I had hung around until the background rocks were in shadow. I learned to do this later on the trip. Notice the snow around the pines. There was plenty of snow in the area. This was taken with my 70-200, and you'll notice it has a naturally cooler rendition than some of the other lenses.

But the real question: what about Domo? Well, he was chillin' at inspiration point as shown here:

In fact, he was chillin' even more in this photo:

We ended up shooting Sunrise and Sunset points at the end of the day, and then headed for a tasty dinner at the lodge at the park. It was a great way to end the first day's shoot!

So, I'm going to blog about the trip that I've just returned from: twelve days of photography in the American Southwest, centered around Utah and Arizona. What a fantastic trip, and a great opportunity for me to get out with some experienced photographers to see this country and try to capture some decent photographs! Up front, I'd like to give a huge 'THANK YOU' to my photographic host, Rick Decker. Rick organized this trip (italics used intentionally), and it was a complete blast. We were joined by Kendall Gelner for some of the trip, and I really enjoyed having him around for the few days he could make it. Thanks also go to Laurence Matson and Chunsum Choi, who provided some vitally needed equipment (I've got some degritting to do...), as well as Sigma for supplying some lenses to try out (that 70 mm Macro is S•H•A•R•P!).

For me, the trip started Friday, May 14. No images were taken (no pixels abused), but Rick and Laurence gave presentations to the Nevada Camera Club in Las Vegas. The presentations were excellent (if long...). Rick did a beautiful job discussing some of his work, experiences, and philosophies around photography. Laurence discussed Foveon and Sigma technology, as well as presenting a number of very nice, large prints. Sigma provided dinner, door prizes, and lenses for those Canon and Nikon shooters to try out. It was a lot of fun, and very well attended (at least 120 people by my count).

The photography would start tomorrow…

Perhaps the most important event of this day happened at the rental car lot: after asking for a 4WD SUV and being told there weren't any, we pointed to a Jeep Wrangler and asked about that one. They said, "yeah, that'll be OK", and we were sent on our merry way without any upgrade charges. The Jeep heavily factors into our trip: it allowed us access to places that we couldn't get to otherwise. I had never been in a Jeep on 'trails'—now I have a profound respect for the things that vehicle can do. And Rick did a great job of navigating over and crawling through some really rough/tough terrain.