East Wall of Park Avenue, Arches National Park

Stunning series of the desert southwest. I love this area, so I always perk up when I see these type of images.

This is a stunning series

Robert and Erwin,

Thanks for the kind comments.

This and the other images in the series (and more to be posted in the future) were taken in May of 1995. These images were taken during about a month trip to photograph particularly in Arches and Canyonlands National Park. The initial shooting in the area was for a workshop with a friend in Arches National Park. It was the wettest spring on record as far as I know at the time. When I traveled to the other side of the state to Bryce Canyon, the rangers said that the meadows were the greenest that they had ever seen them in the 20 years that they were in the park.

As a result of the amount of rain in this area we saw an awful lot of clouds (and in particular this image) that may be uncommon. Needless to say with the rain and the number of clouds while in Utah I was able to take some stunning images.

This image was actually taken about 6 PM. This is the east wall at Park Avenue, near the entrance to the Park. There is also a west wall at this location as well. The west wall images are best taken in the morning for early morning light. However, here, at least at this time of year, it is not possible to take a true sunset photo. As a result, to give the viewer the impression that it was later in golden hour, I used a Tiffen 812 warming filter. In addition, if one views the image, the shadows being cast from the left side of the image were from the west wall. So, as a result, this was the time to take the image. Any later and the shadows from the west wall would have been cast onto the east wall.

The powerful clouds contribute to the strength of the image and the strong blue sky contrasts with the strong orange of the rock (this contrasts the primary and secondary colors of blue and orange).

Additionally, the much more massive overlying Estrada sandstone (the bulk of the rock) overlies the blockier less competent and much more heavily eroded Dewey Bridge Formation mudstone.

The image was taken with a Rodenstock f 6.8 75mm lens that allowed me to record the extent of the view and to also use the line of the rock wall leading from right to left toward a vanishing point.

As the image is printed larger the visual impact increase immeasurably. In fact when it is printed to 24" x 30" the viewer gets the impression and scope of size to just about feel that they are standing here at the time that the image was taken.

Rich