Have you ever dreamed about a lovely vacation shooting photos in an exotic location? What is it really like on assignment for a focused, extended photo shoot? I was fortunate to be able to take a multi-week photography assignment in the beautiful spring desert of southern Utah. During the shoot I tried to record activity, conditions, and details of the shooting. I was on the road for 39 days – 3 for logistics and 36 for travel and shooting. I visited 5 National Parks, 5 National Monuments, 5 National Forests, 4 state parks, 2 scenic byways, 3 scenic back ways, and several undesignated public lands. The total travel was over 4,000 miles – 1,520 in the RV and 2610 in the Jeep – or about 106 miles per day. I camped in 9 different locations and based the shooting time out of these campgrounds.
Sounds like a lot of fun, right? I was up every day between 4 and 6 AM with the exception of three travel days when I slept-in until about 6:30. While there were good night sky conditions on 9 nights (25%) I had only three night shoots lasting until 11 PM or midnight but this was partially because of the weather. On most days I tried to shoot between around 5 or 6 AM and 10 AM and, often, again between 4 and 9 PM for the best lighting conditions.
Conditions are variable, at best, in the spring desert. On 23 of the nights (64%) the temperature dropped below 35 degrees but that was easy to handle with proper clothing. The big problem was late afternoon and evening overcast and wind. On 21 of the days (58%) the wind was consistently above 20 mph. On 18 of the days (50%) gusts were above 30 mph. During one dawn shoot the wind in Dead Horse Point State Park was gusting to 57 mph and the temperature at the dawn shoot was 28 degrees – the joys of photography. With gusts to over 50 mph, I could barely keep my tripod upright, much less stable for long-exposure shots.
Good weather is also a problem for a photographer. The skies were gray and overcast during all of the day on 7 days (19%) but actually stormy on only one day (3%.) The sky was a boring, robin egg blue on 23 days (64%) making mid-day photography unproductive. There were “good” clouds on only 5 days (14%.)
As far as photography goes, I shot a total of 4,569 shots during the 36 days of shooting or about 152 shots per day. I had no quota and tried to be relatively selective but yet capture multiple shots of each compelling subject. While I brought my usual cascade of gear including 3 camera bodies, 7 lenses from 17 to 600mm, 2 tripods, 3 light sources (strobe, ring, and LED), multiple filters, plus the usual spare batteries, memory cards, laptop, external hard drive, and endless connectors, I didn’t shoot a single shot with the crop-sensor cameras or the lenses from 300-600mm. This is strange because in my usual wildlife photography around Jackson, I shoot about two-thirds of my shots with a crop sensor body and the 400-600mm lenses. What a difference for landscape work. I shot 3696 shots (81%) using a 24-70mm f/2.8 zoom, 275 shots (6%) with a 17-40mm f/4 wide-angle zoom, 270 shots (6%) with a 70-200mm f/2.8 short telephoto zoom, and the final 328 shots (7%) with the 70-200mm and a 1.4x teleconverter.
On the trip I visited Arches, Canyonlands (Island in the Sky and the Needles districts), Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, and Grand Canyon (north rim) National Parks. The national monuments visited included Natural Bridges, Grand Staircase Escalante, Vermilion Cliffs, Cedar Breaks, and Pipe Springs. The Utah state parks included Dead Horse Point, Newspaper Rock, Coral Pink Sand Dunes, and Kodachrome Basin. The scenic drives between locations could be destinations in themselves. I will be placing images of each of the locations in the Galleries under the National Parks and Public Lands tab on this website.
Despite the high winds and cold conditions, it was an experience of a lifetime. Southern Utah and northern Arizona have together the largest concentration of National Parks, Monuments, and other public lands of any place in the world. While conditions are unbearable for much of the summer and variable during other months, the panoramic vistas, amazing rock formations and bewildering array of flora will provide a desert experience second to none.
