Arches, Desert and Mountain Views

Sometimes you just need to get some photos of what the desert area looks like. Of course, it helps to have these majestic rocks in the background.

The La Sal mountains are so wonderful from the park, I decided to make a large panorama. With a 200 mm lens on the medium format camera (about 160 mm equivalent for a 35 mm film camera), I took a series of 14 images and stitched them together to me the panorama below. This gives you a much better idea of what it felt like to stand there and take this vista in.

In other places there was actually a bit of color in the rock to brighten the scene.

And these colors really stand out against the dark blue sky in the background.

Even the Delicate Arch, below, is well complemented by the sky and the small color variations in the stone.

As a child, I had a great aunt and uncle that spent part of the year in Mesa Arizona and part in North Carolina. My aunt was a nurse and my uncle was a seeker of fortune who's ill health drove him to the dry southwest but prevented him from much work. They brought back black and white images of some of their travels. Thus, my earliest memories of the southwest are in monochrome. This is much of my inspiration to generate images like the one below for you. This is how my mind conjures up the look of the west.