As we drove back along the route we had taken to get to Utah’s Little Grand Canyon, we stopped to check out a side road near a large campground, where we were considering staying; but as we explored the side road, we discovered more interesting scenery and plenty of open campsites at which to enjoy the scenery.
Our Campsite off of Mexican Mountain Road, Utah
Look closely and my Sportsmobile can be spotted near the center of this image. If just glancing at the image, the Sportsmobile might be mistaken for a natural feature.
This pano, made from our campsite, is of geological features across the roadway.
Across the Roadway 2Across the Roadway 3Near Sunset
We will shoot star photographs at this location. These images were taken not only to show the local scenery, but to select compositions for night sky foregrounds.
More local images and exploration images to follow,
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,
An early rancher in this area left his name on much of the area and there is an old log cabin that he built alongside one of the easily traveled roadways that any vehicle can travel to, at least in good weather. However, just past the cabin that roadway becomes a “moderate” 4 wheel drive as rated by trail books, but has some intervals of what might be better be described as “difficult” 4 wheel drive sections, which we decided not to venture very far along.
There is a hoodoo in Badlands National Park that is visible from the paved road through the park. Getting close to the hoodoo requires hiking down the steep slope from the roadway and a short hike.
I made numerous iPhone camera shots as I walked around the hoodoo to show how a hoodoo can look considerably different from different points of view.
After photographing wildflower scenes around my campsite, I left the campsite to travel into Badlands National Park to scout locations for golden hour photography. But first, I drove around a little in the large public land area, where I was camped to get a better feel for the area and scout other possible campsites, in case my prefered location was again taken or the site I occupied on my first night here was taken, when I returned in the evening.
There are numerous road trails through this area, which is popular with off-road vehicle riders, who create their own trails with their dirt bikes, 4 wheelers and other vehicles. I traveled into the area a bit, but did not take time to fully explore the area, after I was satisfied that it would be no problem to easily find numerous suitable places to overnight here.
I parked along one of the trails on my way out, hiked up to the top of one of the many hills in this area and captured this pano:
There is a gravel road that leads from the small town of Interior, SD into Badlands NP, which I take as a short cut into the park, rather than following the highway to a main entrance. There is a sign indicating when one is entering the park on this backroad, but no entry station. The sign does inform that a permit or fee is required to be in the park, so anyone in the park might be asked by a ranger to show proof of fee payment or other permit. I have a Senior Pass, one of the few benefits of old age, so I never worry about having to show proof that I can be in a National Park.
I stopped on this gravel backroad to shoot a few images of the Badland features in the distance that appear to “erupt” out of the flat land in the foreground.
It was a mostly heavily overcast day with periodic light rain. I stopped at a number of the overlooks to snap a few scouting photos with my iPhone. The dramatic clouds in the sky made for interesting photos and I probably should have taken more time to capture better quality images with my Nikon Z8 and wide angle Z14-24mm lens. The Z8 is sealed well, but keeping rain drops off of the big lens glass can be a problem and I wanted to be able to scurry about quickly, so I left the big camera and lens in my vehicle, while I scouted various locations for shooting later in the day.
With the heavy cloud cover, not much direct light fell upon the badlands features, but occasionally a little light broke through the clouds to highlight some of the rocks.
The shape of the mound of dry, cracked, gray earth in the foreground bears a similarity with the shape of the rain clouds in the sky, yet the dryness of that mound of clay contrasts with the wetness of the clouds.
Lushness and Barrenness
Lush green vegetation in the low areas contrasts with the almost barren rock in the background.
Meander
A meandering stream runs through the low area at the base of the badlands features.
More Badlands images later,
Ken
P.S. These images are best viewed on a large screen.
We returned to the area refered to as White Rocks in Southern Utah for an early morning shoot. I switched from the Nikon D850 and 24-70mm lens to the Nikon Z8 and Nikon Z14-24mm for this shoot.
