At the end of September this year, 2012, I went out to Utah and Colorado to do some photographing.  After a landscape photography workshop in Colorado I stopped to see some good friends in La Verkin, Utah and to spend a day photographing Zion’s National Park.

When I got home a few months ago I went through the 1320 pictures from the Colorado workshop and started on the 509 photos from the day in Zion’s.  Unfortunately this took longer than anticipated to complete, mainly because I took a break from post processing for a little while.

Taking pictures in the Park is very challenging for a lot of the day due to lighting conditions.  The dynamic range from the brightly light rim edges to the shadowed canyon floor was immense.  I really was wishing for a gradient filter with many of these shots to darken the top half of the exposure to get more light into the bottom half of the picture.

I was also able to find some nice moving water to photograph one of my favorite things to try and master.

I also was lucky enough to find a couple of wildlife subjects to photograph throughout the day.  This deer was busy feeding next to the river and wouldn’t pay me any attention.  He was use to seeing so many people in the park.  I am afraid to admit I threw a rock over by him in the water to get him to look up and “pose” for me.  The squirrel was much more cooperative and content to sit there and allow me to take his picture.

This little frog I had to chase all around the rock to get him to hold still enough and to face the right direction.

At the end of the work day Dave took me to a place he and the family like to go.  There is a swimming hole here by a little waterfall.  A very picturesque spot, I’m afraid the light was fading fast and so my skills with the camera, or we’ll say the limitations of the camera itself couldn’t do the scene justice.

I also was lucky enough to find some nice plants to photograph throughout the day.

These cacti were fun to photograph with their many textures.

I can’t remember what this flower is called…. Dave told me, but I forgot.

I have always loved great pictures of the moon.  Because of this one of my photography goals is to collect great pictures of the moon.  Here is the attempt on this trip.  What I need to get better pictures of the moon is a longer focal length lens…

This is the top of the main park where the river comes out of the narrows. I love this shot with the sun reflecting off of the canyon walls in the water.  Once again a really tough exposure to get correct.

 Thanks for enjoying these pictures so far.  If you aren’t tired of them here is a gallery of the pictures I thought worth sharing.

Enjoy! As always comments and critics are welcome 🙂

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