August 7, 2006

Arches.

I was just having coffee with a friend yesterday, talking about my recently completed road trip, and she said, "I thought there would be more photographs." Oh, there are more photographs all right. It will take me some time to sort through them all. I got through my Badlands set, from the last day of the trip. Now, I'm going back to the beginning, to the second day, when I drove from Denver to Moab, Utah, and toured Arches National Park, the park with even better rocks than the Badlands. I'll display a few here, but the whole big set is here.

There in the distance is the famous Delicate Arch:

Arches

These things are amazing but have a rather obscene vibe:

Arches

The road gives a good idea of the scale:

Arches

Like a castle in the distance:

Arches

Sublime layers. This is the one I would paint:

Arches

Doesn't it seem as though every Hollywood cowboy who ever rode a horse should come galloping out from behind that monolith?

Arches

This is the Moab Fault, where something quite extraordinary -- a 2500 foot displacement -- happened 6 million years ago:

Arches

As they say in the movies, let's get out of here:

Arches

It was beautiful:

Arches

9 comments:

Sean Hackbarth said...

They look like Georgia O'Keeffe paintings come to life. Very nice.

David Walser said...

Ann,

Those are some great photos. Perhaps Utah should hire you to blog about each of its five national parks. By the way, my favorite, for a motorcycle tour, is Bryce Canyon. The views are spectacular.

Ann Althouse said...

Yeah, I need to go to Bryce Canyon. I've gone to Zion, but not Bryce. And, actually, I've never seen the Grand Canyon. I guess I should fly and rent a car sometime, much as I love having my own car. I need to rent an Audi TT is the thing. I should take a roadster to make it interesting. Good idea for the winter break!

Kev said...

It's too bad you didn't get closer to the 'castle' -- I think Airwolf might still be there.

Ann Althouse said...

Moxie: Click on the photo to get to the Flickr page with more info. It's a Nikon D50. I've got a long way to go to learn how to use it well from a technological standpoint. The main thing I care about is choosing the subject and framing a composition. That's not about the equipment.

nina said...

Snakes -- any encounters with snakes? Just kidding. Wonderful photos. Thank you.

AmPowerBlog said...

Nice photos! That last pic here is incredibly majestic -- the Wild West!

Burkean Reflections

David Walser said...

Last summer, my family had, what for us was, a near perfect vacation. We stayed for a week at Brian Head Ski Resort, which is right next to Cedar Breaks National Monument. At night, we went down to Cedar City, Utah, an easy 30 minute drive down the canyon, to enjoy the Utah Shakespearean Festival (it's really quite good). By day, we toured Zion and Bryce Canyon, and enjoyed the back-country atop a quad or a horse. It was almost too much to fit into a week and, yet, somehow very relaxing. It was a great combination of the arts and the outdoors. I'd recommend it to just about anyone. (By the way, I don't work for the Utah travel department.)

We took lots of pictures. None as good as Ann's. It must be the camera.

DaveG said...

As they say in the movies, let's get out of here:

I wonder if that's some kind of insider running joke in Hollywood. If you start paying attention to it, a movie that does not have that line or something very similar at least once is very rare indeed.

The main thing I care about is choosing the subject and framing a composition. That's not about the equipment.

I run into that question a lot too. I have a lot of pix over on (shameless plug) http://N466PG.blogspot.com and I'm never asked how I came up with the composition or why I cropped in the manner I did - it's always "what camera did you use to get that great shot?"