Not Your Standard Dead Horse Point Fine Art Landscape Image

Here's another of my favorite images. This one’s of a massive storm over Dead Horse Point. I made this image during a road trip in October of last year. I love Canyonlands. You can stay on the roads and see some amazing stuff. Or you can carry yourself into the back country and see some even more amazing stuff. I went there intending to get a good image of sunrise at Mesa Arch and an image of False Kiva. I’m all in favor of a little bad weather, especially when I’m trying to make an image in a really popular spot like Mesa Arch. In good weather, you’ll have to fight for a place to put your tripod. And all you’ll get for your trouble is the same picture two million other photographers have of the place. That’s neither interesting nor profitable. I’d rather get something unique. A UFO hovering over Mesa Arch would be great but, so far, no luck with that.
We camped at the Willow Flat Campground. It’s pretty nice—a bit over-civilized for my tastes—but pretty nice. If you go there make sure you arrive before 8:00 am. There are only twelve sites and they go fast. The camping fee is $10 a night; cheaper than a motel and a lot more convenient if you want to catch the sunrise. Make sure you bring a water container. There’s no water at the campground, but you can fill up at the visitor center. I usually carry a five-gallon carboy that works well for this sort of trip. And I like to carry water in the truck anyway just in case a radiator hose gives out.
After setting up our campsite, we hiked up Aztec Butte and then out to False Kiva. Both were worthwhile although I wish I could have hauled a six-foot ladder out to False Kiva. That’s about the only way I can think of to get anything approaching a unique perspective on the place. It’s kind of cramped and you don’t have a lot of degrees of freedom.
After that, we photographed the sunset from the Green River Overlook, went back to camp and grilled a steak. Not a bad day. I took some night sky images and hit the sack, intending to get up early for sunrise at Mesa Arch. Sometime in the middle of the night the storm for hell blew in. But I got up early, leaving my wife to sleep in. Mesa Arch is only minutes away. I drove there and sat in the parking lot waiting for the lightning to stop. At least I had the place to myself. As soon as I thought it was half-way safe, I hustled down to the arch hoping against all reason that the sky would clear and give me a beautiful sunrise. It didn’t happen. But I did get a Not-Your-Standard-Mesa-Arch image. It’s not one I’m putting on the site because I don’t think it’d sell, but I kind of like it. Afterwards, I went back to the campground and found my lovely wife up and moving. She told me that she’d been awakened by a big downdraft that had just about crushed the tent. I wasn’t too worried; we’d been through some pretty good storms in that tent and had every confidence in it. The weather still stank, so we took off in the truck looking for things to do without being struck by lightning or washed away. We ended up driving back to Moab and having lunch. On our way back to Canyonlands, we stopped at Dead Horse State Park. I’d never been there and I really wanted a good image of the Dead Horse Point. As you can see, the weather was still pretty wild; the river looked like tomato soup from all the runoff. After fiddling around looking for a good composition, I settled on this one, making a two-image panorama. The clouds were moving pretty fast, so I had to be quick to get two images with the same sky. It’s not the classic Dead Horse Point shot, but that was sort of the point of the exercise.
From there it was only a short drive back to Willow Flat. Unfortunately, our tent was FUBAR. One pole (6061 T6 aluminum, I think) was shattered and another one was bent. The broken end had ripped up the fly and the whole thing was in a big heap. Some kind person had tied a rock to it to keep it from blowing away. We were relieved that our sleeping bags were relatively dry, but there was no possible way to fix the tent. So I wadded it up and put it in a conveniently located trash can and we drove off looking for a hotel room. Not exactly the perfect end to our trip. Now I’m waiting for a sale at REI.