Fun at Canyonlands

coscorrosa

Sunrise (near/at Mesa Arch) and sunset (near Grand View) at Canyonlands National Park. Danny and I arrived about 2-3 hours before dawn at Mesa Arch as we knew it would be front lit by the full moon, there was no one else there until just before sunrise when every photographer near Moab descended upon us. The light wasn't strong enough to really light up the bottom of the arch, but we found some other shots anyway.

Later that day at sunset we went to Grand View at the end of the Island in the Sky part of Canyonlands, the sunset wasn't spectacular but the views definitely were.

Very cool place!

Here are my favorite shots from the day:

#1:



#2:



#3:



#4: Kind of a weird sky on this one, but that's what it looked like. This is more to give you an idea of the view, I might go back and try to fix this later.

dlplumer

Superb stuff Ron. I love them all

dyuhas

Great shots, but I'm partial to #2. Nice perspective.

coscorrosa

Thanks for the comments, I like #2 the best too.

schmoo

Very cool, Ron! You're right - most of us only see shots of that arch during the sunrise but I like your take on it with the moving clouds. I never would have guessed that was pre-dawn if you hadn't said it, because only then did I see the stars. Awesome

chrismoore

I really like #4 because you caught some great light. great job!

theNOIZ

Wow! Awesome images Ron! I love #1 because the sky has that pre-dawn/post-night look where the stars and the blue are both visible.

You guys have a good trip. I'm jealous!

bryanj87

Awesome stuff. I really like that first long exposure shot. The view in last one, wow, I had forgotten how tremendous the view is from there.

coscorrosa

schmoo wrote:

Very cool, Ron! You're right - most of us only see shots of that arch during the sunrise but I like your take on it with the moving clouds. I never would have guessed that was pre-dawn if you hadn't said it, because only then did I see the stars. Awesome

I took a bunch of different exposures before dawn, it's amazing how different they each were because of the clouds. Long exposures are fun that way, you never really know how they're going to look, plus it's not like there's much happening in Moab at 3AM anyway

coscorrosa

theNOIZ wrote:

Wow! Awesome images Ron! I love #1 because the sky has that pre-dawn/post-night look where the stars and the blue are both visible.

You guys have a good trip. I'm jealous!

Thanks! I used to show up right at dawn, now I usually show up an hour before that at least just in case. Like I mentioned we were lucky that we had the full moon illuminating the arch which allowed us to shorten the exposures quite a bit.

dseidman

It's amazing how different our shots are from there. The first two shots are my favorites from this series. Both are quite unique.