Thank you Guy, Actually, I took this image in Oct 2011. Not long after "coincidence" Utah tourism office or department started using a very similar image to promote the location. I actually felt kind of flattered...
No hiking for that image, it was taken just outside the visitors parking lot. No merit for any physical effort
Thanks! Later this year, if the stars align, we're gonna do a driving trip to Las Vegas taking the scenic route (literally) through some of the National Parks and that one would be a dynamite one to photograph. The reason I asked is that a couple of years ago I talked some of my cohorts into accompanying me to shoot Horseshoe Bend. From the Google map it looked like a nice easy stroll from the parking area to the view. OMG! It was a major hike uphill from the parking lot and then downhill (meaning uphill on the way back!) to the view. Plus it was windy and a major Bad Hair Day and sand was blowing all over the place. My hair was all over the place and my face felt sandblasted! I looked like a bag lady! All that for one photo! Jeesh! The only consolation is that it was not summer time! I LOVE the scenery, but I'm not the outdoorsy type at all. Since you got that shot without a major hike, I'll definitely put it on the to-do list.
Very nice image, hopefully you feel it was worth the effort. Like yourself, I am not a fan of walking in soft sand, specially on a long sloping uphill grade. I see that you may have found the edge to be intimidating it's scary to hang over there to get a photo. I had my wife hang onto my belt while I took this one. It was taken on the same trip as the Dead Horse Point, I just recently reprocessed it. Wish I would have had your nice puffy clouds. Enjoy your trip and perhaps keep Bryce Canyon and Zion in mind. Great place to obtain a multitude of great images while dispensing very little physical effort. Enjoy, Jean-Louis
Thanks. Yes, looking back it was worth the effort, and it was actually a nice day trip once we got into decent weather. The web photo from Flickr does not really do justice to the shot at all. This was before any post. The 13x19 print is stunning. This one was on Cinestill 50, which is respooled Eastman motion picture film, and does have a color balance that I was not familiar with. This was shot with the Sigma 18mm ultrawide on the Pentax. I have some others done on the Fuji HS30, but minimum zoom was 24mm. What lenses did you use on these shots? I tried pulling the EXIF on the first one but did not see any lens info. (Film?) I was kinda surprised that there were absolutely no safeguards at all! One mis-step and that would have been it! I'm also surprised that we haven't heard of people falling off. Those nice puffy clouds are actually the remnant of the sucky weather we drove through on the way from Las Vegas. We almost turned back around St. George, in fact we almost did not even go at all. To make a long story long ... We planned to leave Las Vegas at 4:00am, do breakfast in St. George, and get to the Bend around 9:00am to catch the morning light. Well, my brother could not get his hung-over bod outa bed and we ended up leaving Las Vegas at about 5:10am. Then, we hit this super heavy pea-soup fog right as we pulled out of the Virgin River Gorge approaching St. George. I was driving, as my brother was not in the condition to do so as planned, and it was 4 of us in my little rental Chevrolet Alveola or something like that and we pulled off into a truck stop. Make that two truck stops, at the first one the line for the ladies room was 30 people deep outside the entrance! We looked at the weather map and looked at the forecasts and they still looked good for that area so we decided to continue. We did not stop for breakfast. We drove out of the fog just east of St. George. Then, yours truly missed the turn by Hurricane and we had to back-track. We ended up getting there around 10:15am Las Vegas time which we realized was 11:15 local (Mountain Time) in Arizona. Eventually we got there. It didn't look too bad from the parking lot, but when you get to the top it's obvious that the climb BACK is about twice as high and about twice as steep! Then the wind and the sand hits you! It's this very fine red sand that gets in your shoes and is difficult to walk in. On the way back we stopped at a Denny's for our eventual breakfast and I fixed myself up as best I could in the restroom. OMG I wish I brought a scarf or something! On the way back we took the scenic route and passed through one of those cultish "Sister Wives" towns right by the Utah-Arizona border. The light would have been better during the summer months but I would hate to see the temperature when the light is good!
