Tag: Little Grand Canyon

Utah – March 2026 – Part 14

We retrieved our cameras, after leaving them out at night, programmed to shoot the night sky, in the early morning and proceeded to shoot sunrise photos at Utah’s Little Grand Canyon.

Sunrise Golden Hour, Little Grand Canyon, Utah

It was a cloudless morning, so the sky was bland and the sunrise was not at a good angle to illuminate much of the geological features in and around the canyon. This limited the possible compositions. Perhaps another time of the year might work better for sunrise at this location.

Sunrise Golden Hour 1, Little Grand Canyon, Utah
Sunrise Golden Hour 2, Little Grand Canyon, Utah
Early Morning at The Wedge

After a brief and limited golden hour sunrise shoot along the canyon, we drove back to The Wedge and shot a few images there. The smoke from a distant wildfire lingers in the canyon, giving this image a “misty/foggy” appearance.

Early Morning Light, near The Wedge
Early Morning near The Wedge

It was the long, curvy root of this tiny tree on the edge of the canyon that motivated me to compose this image.

Smoky Morning at The Wedge
Smoky Morning 2 at The Wedge

These two Smoky Morning images were shot from the same spot, I just zoomed in a little more and shifted the camera more to my right, eliminating most of the glare from the sun, emphasizing the big round rock in the middle, creating leading line features with the sunlit rocks on the bottom right diagonal and keeping the smoky effect in the canyon.

This concludes my photography (except for the yet to be edited night time photographs) at Utah’s Little Grand Canyon. Now it is time to move on and find another location.

So stay tuned to see what we found,

Ken

Utah – March 2026 – Part 13

This is the second part of Golden Hour Sunset photography at Utah’s Little Grand Canyon.

Big Sky Golden Hour
Golden Hour 11
Golden Hour 12

I used this old tree skeleton as a foreground in a number of compositions as the sun set and light moved up the tree leaving the base in shadow.

Golden Hour 13
Golden Hour 14
Golden Hour 15
Golden Hour 16

Only the rocks on the distant horizon have golden hour light in ‘Golden Hour 16’, but the sky is gaining color.

Big Sky at Golden Hour End

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.

Sunset Clouds (iPhone image)

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.

Thanks for following,

Ken

 

Utah – March 2026 – Part 12

The previous post contained a few of my pre-golden hour images at Utah’s “Little Grand Canyon”. This post has a few of the golden hour images.

Golden Hour 1
Golden Hour 2
Golden Hour 3

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.

Golden Hour 4
Golden Hour 5
Golden Hour 6

Sometimes it appears the best of golden hour is over, then it comes again, as clouds move on the horizon or the sun dips below clouds.

Golden Hour 7
Golden Hour 8
Golden Hour 9
Golden Hour 10

Stay tuned for part 2 of Golden Hour at Utah’s Little Grand Canyon,

Ken

 

 

Utah – March 2026 – Part 11

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.

Big Sky
Late Day Shadows 1
Late Day Shadows 2
Late Day Shadows 3
Late Day Shadows 4

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.

Late Day Shadows 6

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,

Ken

 

Utah – March 2026 – Part 10

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.

Scouting at “The Wedge”
Hazy Canyon

The haze in the canyon is from a forest fire somewhere in the larger area.

Another View from “The Wedge”
At the Edge

On the Edge 2

After scouting, we returned to our base camp and relocated here for sunset, night sky and sunrise photography.

Thanks for following and stay tuned for more of Utah’s “Little Grand Canyon” photos.

Ken