Utah – Ken's Photography and Travel Blog

Utah – March 2026 – Part 19

Followers probably noted the winding road through the landscape as seen from Dead Horse Point in previously posted images. After shooting sunrise at Dead Horse Point, we traveled that road. This post contains a few of the photographys made along that road.

I think this road might be refered to by different names and I’ve mostly heard folks talk about this route as Shafer Trail, but my map shows this portion as Potash Road, to the best that I can decipher the map labels

This pond is a part of a potash production facility. Potash (potasium chloride) is disolved from underground rock with water pumped from the Colorado River and put into evaporation ponds. Blue dye is added to the water to increase solar energy absorption that heats the water speeding up the evaporation process. These ponds can be seen from the Dead Horse Point overlook and are in some of my photos made at that overlook.

I always stand in awe of the natural power of water, wind, weather and time to carve such amazing landscapes.

The road we traveled changes its name to Shafer Trail somewhere along the route, I think at the point where it enters Canyonland National Park. This photo was made at an overlook near where Shafer Trail exits onto a paved road near Canyonlands NP Visitors Center.

Sunset Teaser – March 21, 2026 Dead Horse SP, Utah

Late in the day, we returned to Dead Horse Point for sunset photography. Stay tuned for more,

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 17

A brief look at my camera screen in the early morning, showed that I at least got star photos during the night. I always have some concerns that the program worked as planned, after setting up the camera to shoot well after dark and then retiring to bed. Unfortunately, upon reviewing those images on a big screen it was obvious that the stars were big blurry bright spots. So apparently I either accidentally shifted the focus a little, during the final set up or maybe I forgot to switch off auto focus. I think it was most likely the first, since I vaguely recall having to shift the lens back into auto focus mode for early morning sunrise shots, after realizing the first shot was not in focus. I don’t completely trust my eyesight to get really good focus, when in manual mode.

But I still have two batches of star images to process, which I will have to get to soon.

After shooting a few early morning images, we decided it was time to move on and headed towards the Moab area. Moab has become much more popular than it was during my first few visits here. Now it is very crowded all the time it seems and the rapid growth rate is highly evident. We considered several possibilities for finding a campsite in this high demand camping area, finally selecting a small public land camping area not very far from Dead Horse Point and we were lucky enough to have two or more empty sites from which to select.

After setting up camp, we did a bit of exploring in the local area, stopping by Dead Horse Point to scout it briefly.

This scene reminded me of hiking in Canyonlands NP many years ago.

After this brief visit to Dead Horse Point, we will return later for sunset photography.

Thanks for following,

Ken

Utah – March 2026 – Part 16

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.

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.

Most of the golden hour light was gone by the time I made ‘Early Morning Light’, but I really like the light and shadows on the undulating foreground.

After shooting sunrise from our campsite, we explored more of the local area, driving a number of side roads into the desert.

These rock shapes remind me of crowns that might be worn by kings and queens.

‘Sand, Plants, and Hills’ is a paraphrase from the Eagles’ song ‘A Horse with No Name’.

As evening approached, we set up for more night sky photography.

Thanks for following,

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.

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 zoomed in image shows the campsite location a bit better.

Mexican Mountain Road, Utah, Landscape Pano 1

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.

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

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.

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

Tag: Utah

Utah – March 2026 – Part 19

Like this:

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

Like this:

Utah – March 2026 – Part 17

Like this:

Utah – March 2026 – Part 16

Like this:

Utah – March 2026 – Part 15

Like this:

Utah – March 2026 – Part 14

Like this:

Utah – March 2026 – Part 13

Like this:

Utah – March 2026 – Part 12

Like this:

Utah – March 2026 – Part 11

Like this:

Utah – March 2026 – Part 10

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: