After the gorgeous clouds last night for sunset, I had high hopes for sunrise this morning. One look out the door this morning
quickly quashed any thoughts of a good sunrise. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Since I was already up and cold,
I decided to drive over to the old visitor center and shoot sunrise anyway. I joined 30 other photographers all lined up
below Towers of the Virgin
. This has been our best sunrise spot through the years, but today the cottonwoods
in the foreground were nearly bare, and there were no clouds to add interest to the sky.
I got some needed practice shooting HDRs and panoramas, but I wasn't too serious about anything.
We may have had 15 minutes of warm light before every photographer rushed off to the next destination.
When Carol got up, we drove back up to the slickrock area looking for bighorn sheep. We made the turn just
before Pothole Canyon when we looked up to see 3 bighorn ewes sitting on top of a sandstone pillar
rising 40 feet above the canyon floor. The timing was perfect. The parking area for Pothole Canyon was right there
with an easy trail up to the ridge beside the pillar. We worked our way up the ridge and shot from within
a group of junipers. The bighorn saw us as no threat and one even took a nap. Or he tried to take a nap.
Some guy with his new long lens walked right up to the bighorn while shouting back and forth with his shooting partner.
He had NO clue and quickly drove the bighorn sheep off the sandstone pillar, across the canyon bottom,
and down a neighboring wash. We had already been shooting for an hour so we got our shots,
but he ruined it for a photography workshop that arrived just as the bighorn left. We have met some
of the dumbest wildlife photographers I've ever seen on this trip.
|
|
We returned to camp, grilled hamburgers, worked on images, and relaxed this afternoon. One of the problems with getting good shooting opportunities is that we have hundreds and hundreds of images to develop each day. So far, I'm only keeping up with deleting the images I don't want to keep. I've done almost nothing to develop the best images.
Tomorrow, the trams stop running, and we can drive into the main canyon to photograph. The storm the weather forecasters have been promising for two weeks doesn't seem to be materializing. With the canyon floor mostly barren cottonwoods, we may be concentrating on shooting the formations on the canyon walls like the 3 Patriarchs, The Great White Throne, and Angels Landing. We may hike up to the Emerald Pools in hopes of shooting reflections up there. The Virgin River has plenty of water in it after last week's storm, but the surroundings don't show much promise. If it rains, we're hoping to shoot some of the very temporary waterfalls that drop over the canyon walls a few times each year.
Since we're in camp instead of out shooting, tonight is going to be a grilled salmon and tater tots night. There are advantages to taking a night off from shooting.
Previous Day
Return to Trip Page