Lower Kanarra Creek Falls Kanarraville, Utah I've always wanted to photograph the 2 waterfalls in Kanarra Creek but there are so many amazing spots to visit in Zion that I had never managed to make a visit. On my last day in Zion, Rebecca and I decided to drive to Kanarraville to finally visit Kanarra Creek. The hike starts out along a dirt trail, starts crossing the stream back and forth a hundred times, until eventually you come to a small slot canyon. The photogenic waterfalls are here. Here you can see the first of two wooden "step ladders" along the hike. This step ladder used to have wooden slats, and was much prettier, but was replaced with this metallic one for safety / maintainability. Boo! It's still a beautiful place to visit and well worth the great hike. The glowing back wall makes it hard to leave but if you do, crawl up the ladder and hike another half mile and you'll come to a second waterfall! A little bird decided to hang out with us while we sat and photographed here. It would hop from rung to run until it got to the top, hop onto the rock, then fly back to the bottom. That is until we interrupted him to crawl up the ladder ourselves. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 16mm, f/9, 1.6 sec, ISO 160
Sunrise at the wall to Factory Butte Hanksville, Utah Willie, David, and I spent a few days exploring Factory Butte in Southern Utah. It’s a neat area because it has the giant Factory Butte, beautiful badlands, stunning mesas and plateaus, and crazy desert landscape. There’s a lot to photograph in this area and I can see why we randomly ran into a few of our photographer friends. On our last morning here we woke up early and traveled up a dirt road in search of a view that would look on the wall of Factory Butte. We found a set of rocks that we could climb onto that would give us a little bit of an elevated view onto the Butte. Using the big “bazooka” (Sigma 150-600mm lens) I decided to shoot a large panoramic photo of Factory Butte. I couldn’t quite decide which section I loved best, so I just photographed it all, stitched it in Autopano Giga, and let all the pixels do their thing. Here is a 100 megapixel crop that I loved the best, with all the lines coming down, grabbing your eye Nikon D800 w/Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary: 250mm, f/10, 1/3 sec, ISO 320
Sunrise at the Mesquite Sand Dunes Death Valley National Park, California When you live only 2 hours away from Death Valley and you love to photograph nature, you start to learn the tricks of the National Park. That’s exactly what David Thompson has done — Death Valley is his place! Willie and I were treated to an amazing 4 days in the park under David’s careful direction, and boy did he spoil us. Willie and I arrived in Las Vegas, picked up our rental car and some supplies, and spent the night at David’s house. Perhaps I shouldn’t say “spent the night” because we got less than 3 hours of sleep and then were off to the Mesquite Sand Dunes. David had given us tips on around where we should look for compositions but we really struggled the first morning. He arrived at the park that evening and promised to show us where the spot was. Sure enough, David traipses out into the sand dunes and takes us right to this spot. Beautiful rolling hills and hills of sand dunes. All we had to do was wait for the light to get good. And before we knew it we were running around with our heads cut off trying to make sure not to waste the gorgeous light! Nikon D800 w/Sigma 150-600mm f/2.8: 200mm, f/11, 13.0 sec, ISO 250
