When shooting at golden hour, it is rewarding to look around and towards the western sky, as the setting sun often creates wonderful colors in clouds, which might go unnoticed if one focuses too much on the eastern sky.
After sunset, we set our cameras up to shoot the night sky. As usual, I’m slow in processing those many, many images. So I’ll have to postpone the night sky blog and move onto sunrise images in the next post.
That bush skeleton was mostly in shadow before golden hour, so only a tiny portion of it is illuminated and the same is true for the tree skeleton in the image below.
My son and I began shooting at Utah’s “Little Grand Canyon” ahead of sunset golden hour. This post contains images from that portion of time. The next post will contain golden hour photos.
I like the way the late day light highlights the grass growing in the cracks between the rocks in ‘Late Day Shadows 4’, but I like the bigger picture image ‘Late Day Shadows 5’, made just a little later, when the highlights were almost gone, more. That small tree and the grass anchor the image in ‘Late Day Shadows 4’,
Late Day Shadows 5
but somehow getting more of the rocks into the foreground appeals more to me.
Note that ‘Late Day Shadows 6’ is composed very much like ‘Late Day Shadows 3’, but the shadows are deeper and the highlights look a little brighter in contrast to the shadows. Golden hour is close now. Stay tuned for golden hour images,
After miles of travel on gravel backroads, we arrived at Utah’s “Little Grand Canyon” or the “Wedge” as one viewpoint is called. This canyon does look similar to Arizona’s Grand Canyon, but on a much smaller scale. There are campsites (dry, and there were a few car/tent campers here) on the North end of the area and at least one pit toilet. The roadway through the camping area is rocky and rough, but nothing a normal passenger vehicle can’t handle.
In addition to the impressive Buckhorn Wash Pictograph Panel (previous post) there is another panel with petroglyphs that is not well marked and not as visited. These pictographs are on a rock face a few meters removed from the roadway, requiring a short hike, of which is moderately steep, but not difficult.
These panels are often not easily photographed such that the images are clearly depicted, requiring some excessive editing to bring out the details.
A little further down the roadway, there is an exposed dinosaur footprint up on a ledge above the road. One has to know where to look to find this print, but it is obvious when found, as someone has surrounded it with rocks
In reviewing a map of the area near our base camp, we discovered a place referred to as Utah’s “Little Grand Canyon”, along the San Rafael River. So we set out to check out that site. Along the way we found other interesting places and sites. This post and following ones will showcase our finds.
The drive to the “Little Grand Canyon” was along maintained gravel backroads, although most of the roadways were washboarded, rocky and rough, but scenic for long stretches with exposed geological features.
There are a couple of easily accessible Native American artwork panels on rock faces along this drive. One requires walking up a slight incline to reach, but the most impressive one, Buckhorn Wash Petroglyph Panel, has a large parking lot and is literally right at the edge of the parking lot.
The Buckhorn Wash Petroglyph panel is long. Much longer than this panorama might indicate. I made this panorama with my iPhone by walking fast from one end of the panel to the other, trying not to trip and fall on the rocky, uneven surface. I was inspired to do this, after watching my son do it. Otherwise, I might never have thought to do a pano in this manner.
The following images are shots of small portions of the panel, showing details of some of the pictographs.
There are a number of signs placed in front of this panel with information and questions about what these images mean and how newer cultures came along and modified the older pictographs. And, yes, even modern day vandalism. In fact much damage to this panel was partially repaired in 1995.
Information Sign at Buckhorn Wash Petroglyph Panel
Please refrain from defacing such ancient records. These are already fading away due to natural weathering. Don’t accelerate the loss.
