Arches, Windows and Sculptures
“Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.”
And I struck a geyser with Lisa Lengel.
Who else would get up at 4:30 AM for a photo shoot? Make the coffee. Feed Chloe. All while I’m performing my final calculations on angle and direction of the sunrise to find the perfect location to capture the shot.
It wasn’t an easy trek. We were a bit slow getting started and we left the campground around 5:30 AM. A ten minute drive to Arches National Park and about a 20 minute drive in the park to get to the selected pull-off. What should have been a 10 minute easy hike to location of the shoot, turned out to be about 25 minutes up, then down, then up again as I needed to see it with my own eyes. There’s only so much you can figure out from research on the world wide web. Sometimes, you just need to be in the middle of it to get the angles right.
Since we still had about 10 minutes before sunrise, I decided to set up for a blue hour shot of Turret Arch. There wasn’t much light yet, but a long exposure did the trick.
As we climbed up and into the Turret Arch we continued through and set up for one more blue hour shot, through Turret and back towards both the North Window and the South Window. Remember, this is before the sun rose over the horizon.
A couple more sunrise shots from Turret Arch through the South Window as I zoomed in handheld …
And there was still enough time for us to grab a quick selfie back towards the South Window.
OK, with the sunrise captured, it was time to take a hike. We descended from Turret Arch and headed towards the South Window. Should we go up and through? After having already (erroneously) climbed it once earlier in the morning, we decided to take the “primitive path” around the formation.
As we now found ourselves at the back of the North and South Windows, the sun was absolutely brilliant! And shining it’s golden glow back on the formations. That’s the South Window on the left and the North Window on the right.
A couple of more shots from the back …
… and how could I not take a portrait of Lisa in the perfect light? In her goofy hat.
Before finishing our primitive hike, we were able to catch one more formation with the edges of the La Sal Mountains in the distance.
We meandered our way towards a few “pedestrian” formations …
… before we reached the iconic Balanced Rock. The top of that rock is apparently the size of 3 school buses.
We stumbled across some cactus …
… before we found ourselves in a landscape that reminded us of Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. We’ll thank the residual smoke from the California fires for that.
Our journey continued as we came across some vistas to the West and to the East, including the Petrified Dunes …
Willy was getting a bit jealous, so a few obligatory shots …
… before we drove the roads …
… culminating in our departure from one beautiful park!
