I met up with my friend Ben to take a camping trip through Utah, which is somewhere that I’d never visited before. We had a long list of places we wanted to see, and even with a delay from a punctured tire, we got to see quite a bit. After feeling out of practice while I was in Alaska it felt good to be behind the camera and out in nature again. This post has my favorite pictures from the first half of the trip.

One of our first stops was an early morning trip to the top of the Moki Dugway. The winding road to the top was a little harrowing, but the view was worth it. I hiked to the edge of the cliff and looked out over the Valley of the Gods as the sunrise was painting everything gold. I chose to set my tripod up low and use my wide-angle lens to emphasize the texture of the rock in front of me and the perspective of the scene.

Our next campsite destination was Hanksville. As we made our way there we noticed how little traffic there was on the roads. We crossed the bridge over the Dirty Devil River and decided to pull over to take a look around. Since the traffic was low I decided to take a picture using the road and bridge as a central leading line to the background. Ben saw what I was doing and started walking down the middle of the road. Having him in the photo gives the surroundings a sense of scale and context.

Right outside of Hanksville is the Henry Mountains. We decided to get some sunrise shots of the mountains and make a day out of driving up and over them. I was enthralled with how the light from the rising sun made the snow-covered peaks glow and the way that the wispy clouds were cutting across the mountains. We made it up the mountain road just fine, but coming down on the other side we hit a snag when we punctured a tire and had to change it out for the spare before we could make it back to Hanksville.

We made a few calls and found a new tire in a town a few hours away. After getting that taken care of we decided to go through Capitol Reef on our way back to our campsite. There are so many amazing sights to see at Capitol Reef, but the one that we had to pull over for was Chimney Rock. I was wanting to get an image that gave a sense of how tall and impressive it is and also showed the interesting layers and striations in the ground leading up to it.

Needless to say, this first part of the trip was eventful, but we were still having a great time. I still have more from Utah to show, so be on the lookout for the next blog post. If you’d like to see footage of some of what we saw while we were on the road, as well as my “off the cuff” thoughts on a few of these images as I took them then check out the video below. Until next time, bye for now.