Today was a very good shooting day. Since we couldn't shoot the upper canyon yesterday afternoon, we made it the top priority for today. That meant enjoying a relaxing morning while we waited for the warm afternoon light. We enjoyed a late French toast breakfast and then drove over to the new Fatalli Gallery. He has amazing images, but most of his new work were re-shoots of previous locations. Part of the power of Fatalli's images are the size of the images in the gallery. The new gallery is a huge upgrade from the previous building.
We returned to camp for lunch, "vegged out" for a couple hours, and then drove up to Weeping Rock. We lucked out and found a place to park. When we discovered that there was very little water seeping through the rock layers, we decided it wasn't worth the time to hike up to the spring. We wanted to shoot the drops of the water curtain with a slow exposure, but that only works if there is plenty of water.
We drove back toward the Grotto
where the cottonwood trees were at their peak of color. Carol
saw a place she wanted to stop, so we found a tiny turnoff and
made a quick stop. The cottonwoods provided wonderful framing
for shooting Angels Landing, the Great White Throne, and Lady
Mountain. On the way back from shooting along the Virgin River,
we ran into three deer. We usually aren't that interested in
deer, but these deer included a buck, and they were standing
in front of the brilliant yellow cottonwoods. The young buck
was very majestic until he had to figure out how to cross a rope
barrier along a walkway near the picnic area. He tried just walking
through it, but that didn't work. Then he tried to step over
it, but didn't handle that well either. He finally tried to duck
under the rope, but antlers created a whole new challenge. He
eventually got under the rope, but he had definitely lost his
dignity. Carol had selected a great place.
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We had been planning a new place to shoot sunset for several days. We found a good parking place along the road and started walking down toward the river. We had found some great cottonwoods to use as a foreground to the Watchman. Now, we needed to find the right spot that was high enough to shoot over the cottonwoods and still line up with the Watchman. It sounded easy, but we never found the right place. We ended up shooting along the bike path . It was a good alternative to the classic shot from the bridge, but it wasn't what we had envisioned. Sometimes, the planning just doesn't work out.
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