This is a continuation of sunset photography at Dead Horse Point, Utah.
There is more to shoot at Dead Horse Point than the grand scenic.
To be continued,
Ken
Utah – March 2026 – Part 23
Tag: Utah Landscapes
Utah – March 2026 – Part 22
In an earlier post I revealed that I had gotten my posts out of chronological order. Now I’m stepping back a day to the evening prior to the overcast sky shoot at sunset at Dead Horse Point, Utah. The evening prior was much different.
To be continued,
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 15
There is an arch on a bluff just off of Buckhorn Draw Road, which we stopped to check out on our way back from Little Grand Canyon.
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.
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 zoomed in image shows the campsite location a bit better.
This pano, made from our campsite, is of geological features across the roadway.
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,
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.
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.
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
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.
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’,
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,
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.
The haze in the canyon is from a forest fire somewhere in the larger area.
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
Utah – March 2026 – Part 6
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.
This image makes is look as if there is a big rock feature on top of the cabin, but it is actually on a hillside behind the cabin.
Thanks for following and stay tuned for more Utah landscapes,
Ken