This is a continuation of a late afternoon shoot at Strike Valley Overlook in Capitol Reef National Park.
This old tree skeleton provided a number of compositional possibilities. I think this one is the best photo I got here. If there were only a few clouds in the sky…
I had hoped to get some of these compositions with sunset light on the foreground, but this area very quickly went into shadow before the best of the late day light.
This wraps up our shoot at this location.
Until next time,
Ken
The trail head for Upper Muley Twist Canyon and the Strike Valley Overlook both begin at the end of a three mile, rugged, high clearance, 4 wheel drive road.
There are at least four arches in Upper Muley Twist Canyon in the southern portion of Capitol Reef. The full loop hike of this canyon is a nine mile round trip. Today, our primary destination was the Strike Valley Overlook, which we had scouted earlier in our visit. We had just enough time before sunset to hike to the first arch, which is about a mile from the trailhead.
The first arch is easily missed. It is high up on the canyon wall, does not stand out sharply from the surroundings, and it is obscured by rocks and vegetation along the stream bed. We spotted the arch, though it was not easily accessible and we had no time today to try to find a route to a good vantage point for getting the best photos. The shot above is taken from a sandy bank surrounded by trees and brush just above the stream bed. We resolved to save any more exploration in this canyon for another day and hiked back towards the trailhead and the Strike Valley Overlook trail.
There are high rock outcrops to the west of this overlook area, so the late day shadows encroach rapidly, putting much of the area and the valley in shadow well before the best of golden hour.
This overlook area sits atop the geological feature called the Waterpocket Fold, which runs for miles in the park.
This natural, linear, geological feature looks like a shrub lined walkway.
This old tree remnant, resting at the base of a small rock drop off, reminded me of a line from a German poem that I had to memorize in college. Amazingly, I can still remember the complete poem decades later. The last line translated from the original German: Just wait, soon you too will rest.
An old, dead tree and its shadow were good foreground objects, so this appears in a number of my compositions here.
To be continued,
Ken
Late one day we decided to shoot from one of the overlook areas near the visitors’ center. I shot from a little before golden hour until only the clouds on the distant horizon were illuminated and the color faded away. These are the best of the photos I obtained.
Until next time,
Ken
We returned to the southern portion of Capitol Reef National Park to photograph Strike Valley in the late afternoon with the intention of photographing from somewhere along the switchbacks (numerous sharp turns on the roadway as it climbs steeply from the valley). There were no safe and suitable places to park along the switchbacks, so we settled for shooting from an area above the switchbacks.
In viewing some of these photographs now, I’m thinking some could benefit from cropping portions of the sky, but when I edited these, I was wanting to show the big open sky. Maybe that was a mistake, but I’m not going to change these now.
More later,
Ken
I will continue to test my readers patience with even more photos from Capitol Reef National Park’s Cathedral Valley.
The photographs in this post are all taken around the features called “Temple of the Sun” and “Temple of the Moon”.
These photos were all taken late in the afternoon. The high ridge to the west of these features blocked much of the golden hour light, so essentially all of the foreground objects were already in shadows by the time the best golden hour light illuminated the large monoliths.
Until next time,
Ken
Even more Cathedral Valley photographs,
This is not really a pyramid shape, but it looks that way from this point of view.
Sometime in the distant future there will be more monoliths here.
Until next time,
Ken
More Cathedral Valley photos,
I know these photos are similar, but those clouds that seem to be emanating from the monolithic rock, emphasizing its powerful magic had to be captured in numerous compositions (I have even more, that I will not impose upon the reader).
More later,
Ken
Continued,
The loop road through Cathedral Valley climbs up out of the valley into higher elevations, giving overlooks of the valley and surrounding area.
Ok, so I find these old trees intriguing.
More later,
Ken
Continued,
Even more Cathedral Valley to come, but I will be traveling for awhile, so there may be some breaks in my posting schedule.
Ken
This is a continuation of photographs shot in Cathedral Valley, Capitol Reef National Park shot in March of 2022.
This sinkhole is deeper than this photo makes it appear. Falling in would be undesirable.
To be continued,
Ken
