lscan's photostream  

Our last night on the trip we decided to do a little night (aka astro) photography. So after eating dinner Dave, Tim and I headed back out to Arches for one last shoot. We all tried a couple of setups. Everyone did very long exposure (in the 20 minute plus realm) but we also did shorter exposure high ISO shots. I actually liked my high ISO images best. This was shot at 30 seconds at f/2.8 and an ISO of..... 6400!

The few people I've shown this to before posting it here have asked if there were really that many stars in the sky when I shot the image. The answer is yes although they may not be as bright as they appear in this image.

What I can say is that where we were there is very little light pollution. Meaning its really really dark where we were at. I don't think I've ever seen it this dark even in the middle of corn or bean fields in Illinois.

Probably one of my favorite shots of the trip. This was shot squeezed into a corner of Sand Dune arch. Obviously with a wide angle lens.

The shot really doesn't show why this arch is called sand dune. If you saw the floor of the arch however you'd know. It's almost like a little beach inside. The quantity of sand is incredible. For some shots you almost want to bring a rake to smooth it all out.

When we got here it was late in October and later in the day. I've seen shots from this arch during the summer and can't imagine the thousands (literally) of people squeezed into this little area. Mostly families with little kids. It would have to be incredibly obnoxious!

It seems like the end of October was a long time ago and it is... I've actually had the next set of images done for a long time. For whatever reason I just procrastinated uploading them.

On the left I'm pretty sure is Tim Lester. This was shot at sunset. The funny thing is that on the way up to this point we had a bunch of people tell us, "you missed sunset!" All non-photogs if that's what they thought. It was admittedly getting pretty close to over at this point but there was still a good 20 minutes of light at this point.

This is the standard shot I think anyone who hikes up to Delicate Arch gets. Nothing wrong with it but not real original. That's okay though.

I admit that while we were hiking up here I was more then a little grumpy. It's a pretty hard hike for someone as out of shape as me and by the time I got here I wasn't feeling the love to shoot it. Looking back at it I'm glad I did. It's a beautiful location. I just need to get a little more in shape and start the hike a little earlier.

Finally... The hike back with lights on what the call "slick rock" was interesting. Now whenever I see shots from here in snow at night I have to admire whoever made it up since it's interesting enough hiking to this with light but even more interesting at night and with snowy conditions!

All of this rock that we saw on this trip and we only saw climbers on this one day. At the top of this rock these two guys had 3 or 4 buddies that were already at the top. For some reason a number of them were wearing wild colored wigs.

While in boy scouts many years ago we did a number of climbing adventures. It was a ton of fun and something I'd love to do again but suspect I may need to work on the upper body strength and lose a little weight. For some reason I never see obese climbers... lol