My Excellent Utah Adventure – Part 2

Early Mornings

It’s 5AM and I’m already up. It’s 30 minutes earlier than I would normally get up for work and hours earlier than I would on a normal Saturday morning. But today’s anything but normal. I’m driving in the dark towards my destination and there’s no one else on the road. I just left my motel in the a small town of Springdale, Utah where I arrived yesterday and I’m driving to get to a specific spot in the Zion National Park to take photographs as the sun rises. I’ve already researched when the sun will come up in Utah and I’m there 30 minutes before that. On this trip to Utah, getting the photograph is everything.

My itinerary is completely revolves around getting to the right spots at the right time of day when the sun light will be perfect.

I arrive at the parking lot of the Zion park museum and it’s still pitch dark. I have a flashlight strapped to my head and another in my hand to find the place that I want to go to. In the next 30 minutes, other people start to arrive. They’s all wearing lights on their head too. It’s not surprising as you need to be able to setup your camera in the dark using both hands.

After we’ve gotten our photos, one by one we leave and new people arrive every few minutes, taking the best spots as they become vacant.

I’m carrying more camera equipment than I’ve ever taken on any trip. With me I have a tripod and a second lens that I rented just for this trip. My backpack weighs a ton but I knew what I was getting into when I was planning to come to Utah. In many ways I’m glad that I’m by myself as it makes it easier to keep my focus on just the photography. Barb’s pretty supportive of my photography when we travel but I know that she would get pretty bored of things like me staying at one location for 90 minutes waiting for the sunlight to improve.

After doing the early morning photo shoot this morning I’me heading out again to another part of Zion park and probably won’t be back until the late afternoon. I bought a lunch from a grocery store last night and very likely most of my lunches for the next 8 days will be eaten on a trail somewhere.

Baden