So, we had conquered the 4WD road, and were in another wonderful playground of sandstone, sand, arches, hoodoos, clouds and sun. It was going to be a spectacular day for photography! The drive must have been challenging, because within a half hour we were visited by another Jeep, who came in, and then turned around. They didn't even get out to look around! Whatever…
You can see the tower of Tower Arch on the left side of the photograph (about 1/3 in from the side), and the arch is below it to the right. I wouldn't explore that area until later in the afternoon.
These three formations captured our attention for the first part of the shoot. They'd go in and out of the sun as the clouds raced around.
As we started to hike in and down and around the formation, we came across beautiful formations, lots of wonderful sand, and plenty of flora.
Check out the small pink dot at the top: flare from the 8-16 mm. This is much, much more bearable (even attractive) than the ugly yellow green splotch flare with the 10-20 mm.
This was my best shot of the trip, but then Domo jumped in front and ruined. Well, I hear that CS5 has a Domo cloning tool…
At this point, I'd like to relate a little story of me getting freaked out. Rick and I separated for a while here. I was shooting on a ridge while Rick was making his way over to the east to explore another area. I thought that he was returning up to me within a few minutes. He apparently yelled to me that he was going to continue to the side, and I must have signaled (accidently), but I never heard him. After taking about a half hour shooting, I started to look for him. Nothing. Yelled for him. Nothing. Put on the long lens and scanned for him. Nothing. Because I was sure that he was coming back, I hung for a while. Nothing. Then I thought he might have worked back around me towards the Jeep. So I hiked back in that direction, checking in the valley below the formations to make sure he hadn't fallen (we were up on some moderately high stuff). Nothing. Back at the car, no Rick. At this time I was getting worried, and grabbed my phone, some extra water (we hadn't taken much), and started walking the low valley path to look for him. Yelling (and getting no response). After about a hour and a half or so of missing him (total), I finally spotted him coming back. No big deal to him. But I was relieved that I wasn't going to be dragging a body out from here. If I were to do this trip again, I might suggest a couple radios for just this situation—cell phones aren't very useful in the places we were at.