More Zion, please!

The day after the 9 mile hike in Bryce, I needed a break from serious hiking and decided to take an afternoon drive up to the end of the road in Kolob Canyon. I found some excellent lighting and some nice mixed clouds.

I'm always drawn to the ever-changing colors and patterns on Zion's rock cliffs. Add in the water seeps, plants and sky and you have all the basic building blocks of great photography.

Finally utilizing my telephoto lens, I've brought these distant cliffs much closer.

Just like a postcard, eh? Nice but, not very "artsy".

I like how that tree at the bottom of the cliff shows how really huge this mere portion of a Zion cliff really is.


Such dramatic ruggedness is so very common in Zion. The cliffs of sandstone at Zion are the tallest in the entire world. So much of the wonders of Zion go unseen.

Bryce Yourself!

My long-awaited journey into "Fairyland Canyon" at Bryce Canyon National Park had come! The weather seemed a bit fickle with some strange, but interesting clouds. It was also seasonably cold for the high desert of Utah.

The trails were in excellent shape but, I wasn't, after months of sitting in front of a computer. I knew I was in for a lot of body punishment but, didn't know just how much I would be inflicting on my lazy old bones. The hoodoos were quite plentiful and wonderful, and the light improved as the day went on.

Dropping down into the canyons meant I would have to eventually repay the "gravity debt" by climbing back up. As a windy and dry cold front approached, interesting lenticular clouds began forming but, those were not to be my subjects, as the hoodoos deserved all my camera's attention.

It is an extremely harsh environment for plants and trees, with growing seasons sometimes being merely a few weeks out of each year. Some of the pines, firs and junipers live for many hundreds of years, finding their niches in such a unique ecosystem.

I happened upon a partially-burned snag with a very interesting spiral pattern to the wood. I used the macro function to zoom in and capture this very arsty shot. Right now, this is my favorite shot of the trip.

The hike was filled with impossible rock formations and all kinds of nice reds and whites to go along with the greens of trees and the blue skies.

Back in Zion!

A cloudy day and a long walk in a "finger canyon" resulted in some pretty nice pics, at first looks. The cloudy day guaranteed that I would have to play around with settings and do lots of editing but, I was able to select enough shots that didn't require any adjustments.

This area led me astray of my goal up-canyon but, I did happen to find something to capture. An interesting cave beckoned but just wasn't accessible to me without gear and a partner.

This area is considerably diverse in the types of plants and trees that grow in this narrow and deep canyon. Chances are, these pines are over 300 years old, with sometimes very abrupt growing seasons.

The textures and striations in the rock are just fascinating. Apparently, this rock is relatively erodible but, only in the tiniest of chunks of sand.

The fall colors were clearly past their primes but, a few trees were still clinging to their yellowing leaves. The oaks in the canyon had already dropped theirs. The boxelders and a few cottonwoods supplied some nice yellow to go along with all the rest of the great color in Zion.

With the difficult conditions, I tried to avoid excessive contrast from the sky and concentrated on some fine-artsy stuff dealing with colors and textures. I did a lot of them today, so some will be hits and some will be misses.

Assorted pics from the past

I've been going through my collection of pictures trying to set up some kind of coherant filing system for all of my digital images. This old laptops is just about out of room, yet again.

Here's a shot from the beach in Aptos, California and the pampas grass covering the beach's bluffs. I sharpened and manipulated the scene without adjusting the sky.

Loggers sometimes get bored and resort to carving stuff with their chainsaws. This cute little bear was on a backroad way up in the wilds of Montana.

Right before the 4th of July in Hamilton, Montana, this car showed up in a parking lot near my motel. I just had to walk back and get the camera to shoot this one of a kind car.

This is what is left of the famous Kinzua Bridge in NW Pennsylvania after a tornado-like micro-burst touched down. If you could see to the right, you would see that the entire forest was mowed down by the extreme weather.