Slickrock and Shadow

Color Streaks Through Stone Coyote Buttes South is an immense landscape with no trails.  There are few landmarks and only limited information.  I used Photographing the Southwest:  Arizona  to pick a sunrise location.  Beyond that I found information scarce.  Some online guide information and plenty of time looking at satellite images helped me decide where I wanted to go.  The problem is that something like this on satellite: Coyote Buttes South satellite Images with some GPS locations I programmed  before  my trip. Ends up looking like this in reality: Coyote Buttes images from the ground:  terrain looks much rougher in reality! As usual, I wanted to explore further afield in this awesome locale, searching for something novel and exciting.  I like that feeling of discovery so I left the tall teepees of Coyote Buttes South and crossed that sandy 1 mile to reach the far side of Cottonwood Cove.  Here I d...

Lines of composition at White Pocket This will be a more technical entry featuring the sandstone wonderland of White Pocket.  I'm still sorting through and picking out the "keepers" from my photo trip there last month. Sharpness and vignetting are two key photographic characteristic related to aperture.  When setting an aperture, a very small opening such as f/16 tends to reduce vignetting and enhance the depth of field (how much will be sharp and "in focus" whether near or far from the camera).  This attitude of "I'm going to get the maximum depth of field" attitude works well for some and I've used it for years.  This is especially helpful in the corners of a photograph (where sharpness tends to deteriorate).  This problem is pretty exclusive to wide angle lenses. I changed wide angle lens from Canon's 17-40 f/4 L to the more pricey 16-35 f/2.8 L specifically to get more corner sharpness.  The 16-35 is sharper and I've not re...

 White Pocket, Arizona:  a natural pool in the desert  White Pocket: a jumble of sandstone like no other. White Pocket: a remote and small location in the middle of the Paria Plateau. White Pocket: the end of a journey across the desert on 30 miles of unpaved road, the last 5 miles being deep sand. White Pocket: a worldwide landscape photography location so much so that while I was there no less than 8 other groups came and went, one was a family of 6 from France.  None stayed as long as I did.  Most were there for 2 hours and then left.  That seems shameful as it takes numerous hours simply to reach this spot. Well, I planned a summer trip to the desert for photography.  Summer and desert usually don't equal a good time, but I had planned to hike the famous Buckskin Gulch.  This slot canyon would be cool and shaded.  Perfect for summer. Unless it rained. . . . A prolonged and more powerful summer monsoon season came through the so...

Paria River Canyon overlook as it drains towards Lee's Ferry in the far distance On my latest outing to the desert, I visited a remote overlook that is both breathtaking and untouched.  Perhaps because the Grand Canyon is so close, this overlook is thought to be second rate.  Indeed, nothing can really compare to the Grand Canyon.  However I would rate this particular overlook as a spectacular sight and certainly worth the effort to reach it.  One can actually drive to this site, no hiking required.  The Paria River is filled with a huge percentage of sediment.  In fact it is one of the more cloudy rivers in existence and adds the greatest percentage of sediment to the Colorado River just above the beginning of the Grand Canyon National Park.  Following the river out towards the distance, one can see where the Grand Canyon begins at the site known as Lee's Ferry.  This is part of the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument.  This photogr...