Sunrise, Mesa Arch

Ahh.... my favorite time of day. I've seen lots of pictures of this arch, but never from this viewpoint. I wonder how you got the shot without a lot of other photographers being in the shot. Great work as usual, and thanks for sharing. Your images are making me miss my time out west.

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the compliment. This was my second time to the Arch and my last chance to capture this image before returning home (the first time there the light just did not happen). As I recall this image was taken between 5:30 and 6:00 AM. There were people standing atop the arch in sleeping bags when I got there. They said that they had driven 8 hours to get the arch to watch the sunrise. They were kind enough to move to the side so that I could get the photos. The sun was going in and out behind the clouds and I had to gague and guess when it was lighting the arch and guess the exact exposure.

The rangers at the Park Head in the Island in the Sky were not happy to hear that the vistitors had been on the arch.

I had Westlight Photo, the same lab that Tom Till used in Moab process my film. When the lab technician came out after processing my transparencies he exclaimed "you shot Mesa Arch differently than everyone else, would I like to see Tom's latest transparencies". So I had a treat and saw Tom Till's transparencies put out on the light table I believe even before Tom had the chance to see them. I had been shooting for almost 30 straight days and every several days I had had Westlight process my transparencies to make sure that my exposures with the 4" x 5" were correct. By the middle to the end of the trip I was bracketing in 1/3 stop increments. So what was interesting was that my transparency exposure were more consistent than Tom Till. Of course at the time, Tom did not have the luxury of shooting for 30 straight days.

I really like the composition here. Unusual for the spot. It really works.

Robert,

Thank you for the kind compliment. Unfortunately since this and my other images are in color there are many here at APUG that do not view my work beyond the thumbnails. Unfortunately many of my images including this one have much too much information to be observed in the thumbnail.

Be that as it may, this image was composed differently than any other photo of Mesa Arch at sunrise that I have ever seen. For this image, I took advantage of the arrow shaped bear rock that comes from the lower left of the image and points directly at the arch which is set along the upper third and "pushed" to the right edge of the frame. I am not sure if anyone else has ever discovered this rock before to use as a lead in line. But, as you said it does work and the image just held on Provia 100. In the large prints and large scan of this image the granular sand grains are quite visible. If one looks carefully, you can just make out some of the sneaker or shoe footprints in the sand which are much more visible in the large prints and high resolution scan.

Rich