As usual, I was all alone in the north Bisti parking area overnight. After returning from my early morning shoot, a few people came and went during the mid-day hours.
A young German couple, Tobias and Daniela, parked next to me and we chatted for a few minutes before they headed out into the wilderness area. They were in the US for 4 weeks, traveling via automobile from Phoenix to Pittsburg, seeing sites along the way. The couple returned before 6PM, stopping by to show me a few photos of various places that they had visited so far on their current trip to the US, giving me ideas of other places to visit. Daniela’s blog site is Daniela’s Urlaubs Blog.
I am always amazed at how much international travel the Europeans do. I know traveling between countries in Europe is easy, but many travel outside Europe on a regular basis. I have met numerous Europeans who are on extended vacations, spanning weeks. I know that their labor laws assure their citizens of liberal holiday time, but they must budget a lot for their travels, even if they take advantage of cheap airfare, motels, car rentals, etc. Still, it makes sense to me that if one is traveling so far, taking a long vacation is justified.
During the afternoon, there were dark, heavy clouds all around the area and I could see distant rainfall in numerous directions. Some of those rainfall events seemed to be heading directly towards my location, but it did not rain on me.
I made the panoramic shot above with my iPhone from atop a hill just inside the Bisti Wilderness and just north of the parking area. This hilltop is the nearest place, where I could get a weak cell signal for making calls, getting e-mails and checking the weather, if the weak, intermittent signal lasted long enough to do so. This shot is to the south, showing the massive cloud cover, which might not bode well for a sunset shoot. The Sportsmobile is just a little rectangular blob near the center left edge of this image.
I made preparations to go out for sunset photography, although it was very cloudy in the west and the wind was increasing in intensity. I stuffed my rain shell into my backpack before heading out, just in case of rain.
I hiked to a place, which I had previously scouted for sunset photography, high up on a hard rock platform, overlooking a large array of hoodoos with a wide vista over the desert area.
I made a number of test shots with my iPhone and DSLR of several compositions about an hour before sunset, as I waited and prepared for the warm sunset light. These shots and my observations of the light indicated that the golden sunset light would be very limited today. With this in mind, I carefully walked around on top of my perch area to determine how and where to quickly set up the tripod and camera, during the brief time that I would have to shoot at sunset. Some of my chosen setup locations required carefully planned steps to safely get into position and care in setting the tripod, so I wanted to practice my moves.
I was excited about the possibilities for shooting here. Unfortunately, a large mass of clouds on the western horizon obscured the sun at sunset time. This is such a great place to shoot sunset that I will have to try again tomorrow evening, which will be my final chance to shoot here on this trip. At least I have a few iPhone and DSLR images, just in case tomorrow’s sunset light is no better.
At the time I made these shots, there would have been golden hour light on the two large features on the left of the above image and on the mass of hoodoos in the image below, if the clouds on the western horizon had not blocked the direct rays of sunlight.
The DSLR images in this post have embedded links to the photos on Flickr, where these can be viewed in higher resolution.
I like these compositions and views, but the light that I had anticipated was not realized. Hopefully, tomorrow will be better.
Until then,
Ken