Today began at the ungodly hour of 4AM.  Photographers are a rare breed like that, we think that it is cool to get up BEFORE the ass-crack of dawn so that we can catch the best light of the day.  Sure, there are other people who get up or stay up for bizarre times (like astronomers), but we photographers think that not only do you have to be out when the sun comes up, but also when it goes back down!  Why take only one when you get two for free!?

By 0430 we were rolling down the road towards Canyonlands National Park.  Mesa Arch in the “Island in the Sky” district was the destination.  With headlamps and flashlights and packs full of camera gear we made our way to the arch in the twilight.  Amazingly, we were the fist people to arrive there, so we got prime pickings for spots to shoot from.  It was also a very ominous  start to a day that would turn out to be fantastic.  The only downside was that one of the members of our group had fallen ill due to food poisoning and didn’t feel well enough to make the hike.

We wrapped up shooting at the arch around 0730 after one of the best light shows you could ever hope for.  Only the photos will really describe it, and I have one for you a little later on.  Once we piled back into the cars and headed out to the Grand View Point.  From here you can look out into the two other districts of Canyonlands, “The Needles” district and “The Maze” District.  Both of those districts I have yet to visit, but the drive is a lot longer and they are a lot more wild.  probably a trip to be done with my brother at some point.

We got to breakfast (finally) at around 0945 and then off to the classroom for  some photo editing and some lecture time.  I was so tired it was hard to pay attention, but I did and I have the notes to prove it!  From there we had time for a much needed nap before we were to head out again for the evening shoot.

For the evening shoot we hiked up to Delicate Arch, the iconic symbol of both Arches National Park and the State of Utah.  We got up with plenty of time before we got to the golden hour so we shot some fun stuff like a jumping photo under the arch.  I managed to have a guy yell at me for being under the arch on account of the “dozen photographers waiting to take a picture without you [me] in it!”  The irony being that: A) This man was not of of those photographers, in fact he left almost immediately after the incident, and B) Nine of those photogs were in our group.  Whatever, I paid the same amount of taxes as anyone there and I have every right to take my time!  So, bite-me crazy-man-who-I-will-never-see-again!

After capturing some great sunset images we hiked back to the cars in the dwindling light with a family from Israel who realized the stayed a little too long and didn’t have flashlights.  They were good company on the walk, fun to talk to.  We hit up Zax for some pizza and beer and now it is basically bed time.  Tomorrow will be another long day.

With that, I suppose it is time for the photo of the day.  This is tough because there are so many great ones.  I haven’t even had time to got through them all.  So I picked this one because it was kind of the iconic shot for the day.  So here it is, Mesa Arch:

Mesa Arch at SunriseCanyonlands National Park©2010 Alex Weisman

As always, comments and critiques are welcome!  I will post more images over at IceWolf Photography as I get through them (I know I am way behind already!).

Today was the first day of the Photo workshop.  So far it has been a blast.  I am not going to write too much on account of the fact that I have to get up at 4AM to be out the door by 4:30AM so that we can shoot sunrise at Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park.  That should be a lot of fun aside from the getting up before the ass-crack of dawn.  Actually, tomorrow has the potential to be a very long day as I believe we are also suppose to do sunset at Delicate Arch.

Anyway, we kicked off the day with a lame breakfast at the hotel.  I suppose it could have been worse.  Then we headed off to the meeting location in town to meet the rest of the group.  Ten people, mostly from around the western park of the country make up the group.  I am definitely the youngest in the group, but I don’t think that people mind, I certainly don’t.  There is very large dynamic of knowledge, which is great.  The instructor, Winston “Tuner” C. Hall is a great person.  he has a lot of energy and experience and he is fun to work with.  It will be interesting when we get to our first processing session tomorrow.

Today we spent a couple hours in the classroom getting to know everyone, making settings on cameras and talking about techniques.  Some things were basic, some were new.  My goal here is to really learn to make better compositions, and i think that a lot of the information will help.  We then headed off to the “Birthing Stone” which is a stone with some amazing petroglyphs.  It isn’t in either of the parks here, it is on BLM land.  Currently you can get pretty close to it which made for some interesting shots.  It is so named due to the depiction of a woman giving birth.

From the Birthing Stone we headed into town for lunch and then off to Canyonlands to scout the location for the sunrise shoot and also to climb Aztec Mesa.  Aztec Mesa has some old Aztec granaries just below the top.  We hiked through some of them and I captured this image with my new 15mm full frame fisheye lens.  This image is an HDR image.  HDR stand for “High Dynamic Range” and is a technique that has ben developed with digital cameras to more closely mimic the dynamic range visible to the human eye.  The human eye can see a range of around 16-stops whereas a digital sensor can see about 5-stops.  HDR images are composed of a series of images taken to expose for details in the highlights, shadows and mid-tones.  I am still relatively new in the HDR scene, so I am still playing with software and technique.  Here is the image:

Triple Arch View HDR 1From a series of 5 images shot in 1ev steps to +/-2ev. Handheld, HDR composite using Photomatix Plugin for Aperture.
©2010 Alex Weisman

As always, comments and critique are welcome.  I will post more photos later, for now, I am off to bed!