I had a spare day to fill during my time in southern Utah so I decided I would get out and do some photography. My first stop was Devil’s Garden Outstanding Natural Area, located 12 miles down Hole-in-the-Rock Road, an unpaved BLM road just southeast of the town of Escalante. The area features a number of hoodoos (pillars), arches, and other interesting formations. I left my hotel room at 5AM and drove in the dark (on a sometimes-rocky, sometimes-sandy, always-bumpy “road” that I’d never been on before – exciting!) to ensure that I’d arrive just before dawn. The result was easily the best set of photos I’ve ever taken.
Unlike all of my previous trip reports, since this was a just a quick morning jaunt with the camera there will be no mention of gear. Instead, I thought I’d just walk through the pictures and provide a bit of commentary. You can also view the complete gallery.
The two pillars situated atop these neighboring mounds provided the focus for the first few shots. A few particularly bright stars (planets?) are still visible in the background. Ideally I would have liked to capture more separation between the front two pillars (there’s a small spot of blue but nothing contiguous). I would have also liked to have shot lower such as to hide the mountains in the background, allowing the purple-blue sky to accentuate the silhouette of the mounds. Finally, the sagebrush and juniper tree in the background were unavoidable, preventing a composition that was all rock and sky.
The same two pillars from a different angle. Lacking an ultra-wide lens, there was no way to capture just the two pillars without including the tree so I opted to use it to fill the space between them. I think this worked for the most part, however, it also meant including the rightmost bush as well.
A shot of just the “hat” pillar. This one demonstrates the effect I was talking about earlier whereby shooting up from a low position hides the mountains along the horizon, accentuating the curvature of the slickrock mounds. Again, because my lens was only 28mm and not something wider I had to include the grasses in the bottom left in order to capture the entire pillar. Fortunately I think the grasses really work to offset the pillar.
My favorite of the bunch. The top of the sun is just starting to crest the horizon, lighting up the right wall of this arch like fire. The low light meant that the HDR merge wasn’t as crisp as I’d like (edges on the rocks are just a bit fuzzy) and there’s a purple halo of chromatic aberration where the arch meets the sky. But, I don’t care. I even like the unavoidable branches in the top right corner. Beautiful.
Walking through the arch and looking back reveals rocks saturated in yellow and orange from the sunrise. I thought the brightness of the boulder nicely contrasted the dark patterns on the wall, and I also did a little bit of high keying on the logs to make them a bit more bleached and bone-like. I do wish that I could have captured the sky through the arch in order to make the geometry more obvious but nature had other ideas.
The rocks in the foreground form a sandstone bench in front of another striking pillar.
Wow. These two incredible formations against the backdrop of the purple-and-blue sky are just breathtaking. Runner-up for my favorite shot. Again, a slightly lower position might have yielded a backdrop without any mountains.
The parking lot lies just on the other side of this wall. The increasing level of light is such that, unfortunately, the color is slowly being drained out of the sky. Upon further inspection I think removing the top of the bush that’s just visible between the two groups of pillars would eliminate a distraction. Composition-wise this was the best I could do with a tabletop tripod, a return trip will something full-sized might have yielded better separation between the bush on the right and the pillars.
The idea behind this picture was to look down through a series of arches and gaps that just happened to line up with each other. I did my best but unfortunately I don’t think the photo really captures the in-person feeling effectively.
Perfect. A much lighter slickrock formation with three bowling ball-like holes against a backdrop of broken shelves and redder rock. I love the way that the slope of the top of the foreground pillar matches that of the shelves in the background.
The saturation on this panorama of the nearby mountains was overdone in order to try to recreate the surreal feeling of seeing them in person. Horizontal rays from the sunrise have lit up the entire length of the cliffs and are starting to creep across the plain.
While walking along a dry riverbed the sun washed the rock band and bush above me in fire. I liked the brilliance of the rock and the contrast of the smooth bands with the spikiness of the bush against the sky so I grabbed this shot. Mostly I think it works on a color level by opposing the deep blues of the sky with the yellows and oranges of the rock. It was such a tight crop, however, that the detail and sharpness leave something to be desired.
By now enough of the sun is visible that shadows are being cast and the amazing colors of the sky have now transferred onto the rocks themselves. This shot does a much better job than the previous one of contrasting the orange rocks against the blue sky. I do wish it was just a touch sharper but not bad for low-light hand-held. In fact, the use of a wider aperture to capture more light helped with the blurring of the background, increasing separation. Love this shot.
Just a few moments later and the sun’s rays are even more intense on some of the taller structures. The foreground in the full picture was uninteresting and colorless compared to the sunlit parts so I opted to just crop it out in favor of a more abstract rock-against-sky composition. After that the hardest part was just trying to balance the positions of the rocks: I think this final crop where the tallest pillar is just right of center works quite well.
A close-up shot of the wall, now with some more intense colors courtesy of the rising sun. However, you can also see some more intense shadows as well. I’ve intentionally cropped (and perhaps even distorted) the picture so that the line between the upper and lower layers of rock cuts perfectly horizontally across the image. Making this same line equidistant between the top and bottom made the upper half of the photo feel too claustrophobic due to the lack of sky so I pushed it slightly lower. This also had the nice side effect of increasing the amount of color since the bottom is pretty drab. Perhaps a nice alternative would have been to discard the bottom portion entirely?
As an amateur landscape photographer I’d heard (and subsequently always resisted) the idea that if you’re not shooting at dusk or dawn then you’re wasting your time. While I still don’t believe it to be 100% true, I think the big lesson of this excursion, given the incredible results, is that this idea has a lot of merit.