Around my home in Banff, Alberta the landscape photography is pretty amazing at the world class level. However, even I need a vacation to travel somewhere else every now and then. Last month, April 2015, Kazue and I decided to head down to Southwestern Utah to get an early start on the rock climbing season and to visit a landscape photography location that has been high on my list for decades, Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. In the slideshow at the bottom of this post you’ll see that we were rewarded with some spectacular landscape photography. This area should be on the “must photograph” list of every landscape photographer.
After taking two days to reach Moab, Utah, we knew we had reached one of those special places in the world that everyone should see. As we started to enter the region we stopped by the side of the road to whip up a little lunch. Shortly after starting to cook we where paid a visit by a polite State Trooper as he passed by us on state scenic byway number 128 just East of Moab along the Colorado River where we had stopped for lunch. He pulled into where we were parked and asked if we were broke down and needed help. After finding out we were OK and noticing that we were tourists from Canada he pointed out a wall of native rock cravings in the rock just 30 meters away in the boulder field beside were we parked. That was nice of him and after we finished our lunch I took some time to photograph the Navajo rock carving panel. He also recommended camping at one of the many nice and affordable state campgrounds a little farther west down the highway we were on and let us know about a natural spring close to Moab that had an endless supply of good drinking water about 500m East of the last traffic light on the North end of Moab. His advice was great, particularly about where to find potable drinking water in the middle of the desert. What a great introduction to the area!
The kindness from the locals didn’t stop there. People kept helping us out to find the best locations for landscape photography as well suggesting some great classic multipitch rock climbs up a few desert rock towers. I had a list of classic areas I wanted to visit and photograph like Delicate Arch, Mesa Arch, The Window Arches, Landscape Arch, Dead Horse Point State Park and Upheaval Dome. We weren’t disappointed but we did wish we had more time in the area than the 12 days we had for our trip. Below, I’ve added a slideshow showing the highlights of our trip to the area showing the huge landscape photography opportunities the area offers the dedicated photographer. I sincerely hope you like our trip and if you have any questions about when and where to go while visiting this area just send them to me in a form on my contact page.
Happy Photography!
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