![]() ![]() The butte seen underneath the arch and the butte seen over the top of the arch are very distinct features and completely separated within the vastness of the floodplain. The space is a gnarled land of eroded canyons and geological features as I have described. Think of it this way: As I explained, once you get beyond the arch itself, the face of Island in the Sky is sheer for a thousand feet and then another thousand feet down between the bottom of the plateau and the river itself which is several (at least four and perhaps nearly five) miles away. I have encountered the opportunity to create the Image I shared on only one occasion in all of my visits to Mesa Arch so it was not something I approached non-nonchalantly. I really appreciate your responding to my rant but truth is, all any of us has in the material world is our integrity as a human being, and I try to guard mine assiduously. Perhaps you might wish to meet me there sometime and we can replicate the scene as it appears here, which I assure you is, very much, a single photograph. That should be enough of an explanation to clear up your observations. ![]() So shaded light tends to have a more bluish cast to it. Shaded light has the character of having the warm wavelengths – yellow, red, orange – mostly filtered out and the remaining wavelengths are more toward the cool (blue) end of the spectrum. the background, are not receiving direct sunlight, which is to say they are shaded. These two features are easily a mile apart where they sit overlooking the Colorado River.Īs you can see from the color underneath the arch, the sun is rising far to the right and thus the canyons behind the mid-ground features, i.e. The top of the nearest butte and the base of the butte to the left of it are truncated by the arch Not only do they not line up in the Image, they haven’t lined up for 70 million years as the “Island” has eroded away. ![]() There are four very distinct geological features – a spire and three monuments – in the far mid-ground before you see the far background, in its blue light and the features that are within it. In other words, there’s not much directly behind it other than space and opportunity for several miles. On the back side of the arch, through its opening or over the top, the Island in the Sky drops off some 2000′, almost vertically. I have had the privilege of being at Mesa Arch perhaps a dozen times and I have walked on it, climbed on it, and studied its geology up closely and personally. There is much that I do not have, but integrity I will claim in spades. Were this Image anything other than what I have described, I would have told you up front. I don’t recall that in the thirteen years I have been posting the weekly Image for the Asking, you have ever offered a comment so I hope you will forgive the somewhat brusque nature of my response. It isn’t about gloom-and doom, it’s just a recognition of what is: Abbey reincarnated, if you will. And if we do not learn to visit with respect, we will, sad-to-say, love the Red Rock to death. This aperture setting also allowed for a shutter speed of 1/15th second at ISO 100 which was fast enough to prevent motion in the foliage created by the warming desert air.Īs special as Utah’s Big Five National Parks are to me, they have become so heavily visited it is not difficult to consider them almost as sacrifice zones that draw the crowds so that the lesser and more-difficult-to-access beauties can remain more or less pristine. An aperture of f/11 provided depth-of-field, but also took into account that the background buttes and mesas would be a bit soft as the depth trailed off in their direction. Mesa Arch has become a world attraction such that every day scores, if not hundreds, of visitors make the walk to see the light bounce off the underside of the fabled sandstone as the canyonlands light up from below.Ī focal length of 225mm gave me the narrowed angle-of-view I wanted to isolate the extremes of the arch as it merged with the parental stone. Sadly, it has become such that it is, for all practical purposes, impossible to re-create this scene. No matter how many times I make that quarter mile walk from the parking lot to the sandstone arc of Mesa Arch, it is a sight of which I never grow weary. As much as I am deeply drawn to the sunrises in the East, I am perhaps even more attracted to the drama created by the solar disk as it appears above western horizons, and sometimes even when it doesn’t appear at all, but merely sends its reflected light to bounce of the Red Rock.
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