Nikon Z8 – Ken's Photography and Travel Blog

Utah – March 2026 – Part 21

This is a continuation of photography at Dead Horse Point, Utah on an overcast evening in March, 2026.

Ah, at last a little muted sunset light on those distant cliffs.

This final image shows that we were not alone at this popular view point.

Thanks for following,

Ken

After driving Potash Road and the Shafer Trail, we returned to Dead Horse Point for sunset photography. It was a heavily overcast evening, so prospects for a golden sunset hour did not look promising.

This tree creature seems to be relishing the sunshine on its shoulder.

Twisting through the desert dust, a strong anchor holding its life form firmly to the earth.

A portion of a nearby coppery cliff edge glows in late day sunlight, thick desert clouds envelope the landscape below in deep shadow.

Desert plants sink their roots into the thin soil and hard rock, where scant moisture hides from the harsh sun. The V shape of the niche in the rock is reminiscent of similar shapes seen in Georgia O’Keefe’s artwork.

Thanks for following,

Ken

Utah – March 2026 – Part 18 – Sunrise at Dead Horse Point, Utah

I try to keep my blogs in chronological order and use images in my blogs with links to my photos posted to Flickr, but sometimes I slip up. A few days ago, I realized that somehow I had skipped editing sunset photos made the first day we were at Dead Horse Point, Utah and I had begun to post photos to Flickr from the second evening at Dead Horse Point. So I’m going to violate my chronological order for at least portions of these two days of shooting, posting images from day 2 ahead of day 1.

We went out early on day 2 at Dead Horse Point for sunrise photography.

I set up my camera and watched the sunrise light as it moved across the wonderful and rugged landscape at Dead Horse Point, making a number of images for a sunrise sequence.

Note that I zoomed in a little for #8 to get a better view of the reflections in the Colorado River.

Thanks for following and stay tuned for more photos from this area of geological wonders.

Ken

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Ken

Impressions of Fall 2025 – Part 20

Photos from my final fall photo shoot of 2025.

And that’s a wrap for fall 2025,

Ken

Impressions of Fall 2025 – Part 19

I made one final excursion into Brown County State Park near Nashville, Indiana in the early morning hours the first week in November 2025 to wrap up my fall photography for 2025. My first stop was at Ogle Lake to shoot the sunrise sky.