Chasing the light

“I’m so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.”

— Muhammad Ali

And that’s how quickly the light changes.

The sunrise photo shoot the night before at Capitol Reef National Park was a bust. Chasing from cliff to cliff. From canyon to canyon. From dome to dome. And we struck out.

As the sun was setting, just about ready to hit the top of the formations with a golden light, the clouds moved in. We quickly drove up the scenic drive as the light seemed to be hitting best up there. And as we got to the top, the clouds followed. Looking down to the base, we saw the elusive golden light. Back in the Jeep to descend from our elevation. And the clouds followed us. We gave up.

And vowed to catch a sunrise instead. Hello 4:30 wakeup call.

We first drove to the base of the Capitol Dome (yep that’s where the name of this National Park comes from). Alas, we were at too low an elevation to capture the sunrise. OK, let’s book it up to the Panorama Point. That certainly sounded promising.

Eureka - we struck gold! Golden Hour light, that is.

How about zooming in and experimenting with the exposure …

Now, this was the magical light that I’d been chasing. Time to swing around and see what that light from the low sun was doing to the landscape behind and beside us.

At this point, we decided to drive up the Scenic Drive to Capitol Gorge. This was essentially the same path we took the prior night, where the light was not cooperating.

Lisa encouraged me to stop along the way to capture the beautiful old barn. The light was not yet hitting it to my liking, so I decided to go black and white.

It was at this location that I came nose to nose with this beauty …

As we worked our way to a higher elevation, the light was hitting the formations nicely …

And when we approached the Capitol Gorge Road, the formations were rising quickly, and the light changing rapidly.

And the deeper we went, the colors continued to evolve …

We even had the opportunity to catch another sunrise …

The hike along Capitol Gorge Trail was quite easy, with only 137 foot elevation change, but once the sun came up over the formations, the temperature quickly rose.

As the canyon walls rose around us, we were grateful for the shade it provided us.

And to put it into context, Lisa captured this shot of me along this trail …

I love photographing reflections in water. We did make a side climb to The Tanks - which were advertised as “an interesting set of undulating waterpockets perched in a row high above the canyon floor”. So we made the climb …

And this is what we found …

Oh well - you win some and you lose some. At least our trusty Willys was waiting for us at the trail head.

On our next morning, we decided to take a hike up to Hickmans Natural Bridge, a 133 foot span up in the hills near the Capitol Dome. The elevation gain for this hike was a mere 437 feet. We got this.

At the start of the hike, we came across a stream with a nice view of the Capitol Dome.

As we ascended the trail, we had a couple of more peeks at the dome …

It was still early, so we had an opportunity to catch some formations in beautiful light.

One of the best parts about Capitol Reef National Park is that it’s relatively quiet. No crowds like the big parks. We had this trail virtually to ourselves. Which meant that were able to capture Hickmans Bridge in all its glory, without any other pesky tourists.