I’ve fallen behind in my normal blog post schedule, being preoccupied with other summer time activities. I’ll try to get back to a more regular schedule.
Sunrise Golden Hour 1
I used this geological feature as a foreground for star photography. As usual, I’m slow at processing those night images, so the star photos will have to be in a later post.
While waiting for my son to join me, I could not resist walking around the desert area surrounding my Utah campsite, capturing desert scenes with my iPhone camera.
I regret that I can’t find the poetry to describe these desert scenes. I’ve noted a few of my photography contacts on Flickr suddenly waxing poetic in a manner that suggest AI generated text. I have to admit, I’ve thought about that, but I’ve not yet given in to that temptation.
Thanks for following and stay tuned for more Utah desert scenes,
The weather forecast for my 2nd morning at Badlands National Park was for early morning heavy overcast with rain beginning in the early morning hours. So I did not bother getting up before sunrise, hoping the overcast and rain would dissipate prior to sunset.
Sure enough, I awoke to the sound of light rain falling. I was camped in an area of mostly all clay soil. I knew the rain would be bad news for navigation out of my campsite, so I quickly got dressed and prepared the Sportsmobile for travel. The terrain was already getting muddy and slippery, so I shifted into 4 wheel drive, as I had a couple of low hills to go up on my way out. Those hills sloped sideways as well as upwards and the Sportsmobile was slipping sideways on the hills. Slidding off would not be good. Fortunately, I made it over those two hills, thinking that once I got onto the flat land on my way out of the camping area there would be no problems. Well, even traveling slowly in 4WD, the Sportsmobile still fishtailed in the slippery, wet clay until I got onto the paved roadway.
I drove on into the park, parked in one of the parking areas to have coffee and breakfast as it continued to rain steadily for most of the time.
After breakfast, I contiuned to drive through the park in the light rain. It was apparent that I would not be able to get off of the paved roadway area due to the soggy soil everywhere else. I stopped periodically, walked around in the rain and shot with my iPhone, since it was easier to keep the rain off of the iPhone camera lens than it would have been to do with my big Nikon lenses.
The rain added some mood to the park scenes and the wettness enhanced the color in the geologic features. There were many wildflowers and grasses along the roadway, which I photographed with raindrops covering them and sometimes with the park features in the background, although the depth of field with the iPhone was severely limited in such scenes.
I made numerous images of this and other nearby Prickly Pear flowers. I think this is my best shot.
And to back track a little, I had stopped along the gravel, backroad into the park to check out a possible area for late day photography and noted the numerous and varied wildflowers at the side of the roadway. the sun was high in the sky, so the lighting was not highly favorable for shooting the wildflowers, but I did so anyway using the camera in my iPhone.
Though my iPhone identifies this yellow wildflower with many petals as a ‘Common Dandelion’, these don’t look like the dandelions that commonly grow in my Texas lawn. So maybe Texas does not have ‘Common Dandelions’?
I thought this wildflower was a form of the Texas Primrose, commonly referred to as a ‘buttercup’. Not so, according to my iPhone, which says it is ‘Field Bindweed’. The flower petals open more flatly than do those of the Texas Primrose.
And while the current topic is wildflowers, there are many in the Badland National Park. In my scouting stops along the main roadway through the park, I photographed many.
At the very end of a visit to Badlands National Park several years ago, I thought I had found a really good place for sunset photography. So during this visit I found that location again and walked around during the day, scouting possible locations to return to at sunset. I used my iPhone camera to test a few compositions and capture a few micro-environmental images.
My first inclination was to call this “Puddle House” for an obvious reason. I had to shoot this old, abandoned house from a fence line near the roadway with a big zoom to get the close up image.
The square shape of the head on this hoodoo looks as if it could have been purposely shaped. Getting this image with that georgeous sky behind it was a bonus.
Square Head from another view point
Maybe those rocks in the foreground are from previous hoodoos here?
This post is a continuation of photography in an area of Southern Utah that is commonly referred to as “White Rocks”. There are many interesting rock features in this area.
I have to admit to cheating a little in the editing of this first image. In the original image there was a big rock where the two in the foreground are now. I found that single, large rock distracting, so I used Lightroom’s AI tool to break that rock into smaller rocks. This tool is often used to remove objects, but it can also modify objects. the tool creates three choices from which to choose at each activation and one can repeat the activation, if none of the choices are desirable. I could have completely removed that big rock, but that did not seem appropriate, so I chose this broken rock alternative, which I think fits better with the other rocks in the “Broken Circle”. Some will object to this blatant modification of a landscape, but I’ve finally gotten to the point of seeing such photography as much as art as in faithfully copying what nature provides. So I’m ok with modifications, within reasonable limits and we have to use our own judgment as to what is “reasonable”.
Geologist refer to these rock features as “hoodoos” or “toadstools”. To me the rock atop the pedestal in the foreground here looks like a toad. So Maybe this is a “Toad’s Stool”.
I titled this “Parent and Child”, but I can also see it as a dog with its tail sticking up. Some people’s pareiodlia may see it otherwise, but in the end it is another of natures marvelous creations, no matter how we perceive it.
I made this second image of “Parent and Child” a few minutes after the first, composing from a different angle. Within those few minutes, the sky in the background had changed significantly due to the windy conditions, illustrating how a minor change in view point and changing environmently conditions can affect a photograph.
A close up of the hoodoo with the pink bonnet in the previous image and a conversion to monochrome, give a completly different interpretation to this scene.
Getting into a position to make this image was not easy. Steep slopes with gravel size rock chips and thin layers of sand over the hard rock surface and other obstacles, made moving around treacherous and positioning awkward.
These hoodoos are the same one presented in individual photos. Grouping these into one shot, I’m imagining a father, child and mother in these rock shapes, all peering down into the valley below.
Another group of hoodoos that look like a family unit. Dad in the background, mom on the right, casting a sideways look at the child in a curious manner.
That’s it for now. Stay tuned for more Southern Utah landscapes,
