I just recently returned from a road trip to Utah with Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio thrown into the middle of the Utah trip. What a contrast that was, visually! From desert to valleys with marshes, woods with wildflowers, and rain. But it was a great workshop and I was glad to be there.
The Moab Photographer’s Symposium was also great! It was an inspiring mix of speakers, and I was honored to be included; the participants were enthusiastic and many were very accomplished. Bruce is organizing it again next year, only this time it’s a Black-and-White Symposium, so I guess if I want to get on the speaking list again I better start channeling my inner Ansel Adams! The new dates are in May, watch for the information on their website.
I arrived in Moab a few days early so that I could shake out the cobwebs of having been in the office way too long editing pictures. I buzzed across California and Nevada to get there, and then I slowed down and explored Arches, a park I hadn’t been to in some time. I challenged myself to create pictures that captured the essence of the park without necessarily including an icon. One afternoon the light and weather was really interesting – fresh snow had fallen on the mountains and it was beautiful. I used my Tamron 150-600mm lens to optically compress the distance between the La Sal mountains and the hoodoos, which made the mountains feel large and the scene more compact. As I photographed the sun came and went and different hoodoos and parts of the land were illuminated. I chose this one because the light was feathered on the foreground and held the detail there while illuminating the hoodoos behind and the slopes of the mountains.
I’ll be posting additional images from this trip in the next few days. It’s taken some time to cull through the images captured on this trip!
Thanks for visiting, comments are always welcome.
Superb game with the light & dark
Thanks fpga!
That is one special image Brenda! So glad you were part of that stellar group at the Moab Symposium. I’d love to get out to that one year. Some of my favorite photographers were part of it with you this year.
Thank you, JB! I think I could guess your fave photographers…they are some of mine too!
Wonderful image, Brenda. I love how you were able to bring the mountains forward with your long lens. I have never had one longer than 200 mm. While it would be nice to have a longer lens, I don’t think I would use it enough to justify the cost. Right now I am lusting over the new Zeiss 18 mm prime for my full-frame Sony. I think it is a better choice than the Sony 18-35 mm zoom, since I already am covered down to 24 mm with my 24-70.
Thanks, David. It’s all in how you see, David, so you’re right if you can’t see yourself using it enough to justify the cost! I have heard great things about the Zeiss lenses for the Sony and I’m toiling over what to buy first, myself, as a prime. I’m currently using my Canon lenses with Metabones IV, it’s fine for landscapes/manual focus, etc. but I still want to add some primes to the kit.