Canyonlands National Park - Needles District

During my visit to

Canyonlands

, I went on a few short hikes. These pictures are from the Cave Springs in the Needles District. The coolest part of this hike was the ladder pictured below. There are two of these required to climb as part of this hike around and over the Cave Springs.

Cowboys utilized the Cave Springs as a camp many years ago. There are remnants of their camp below.

Natural Cave Springs

Mesa Arch Sunrise - Canyonlands National Park

I'm finally trying to get caught up on my photo expedition from September. I spent one morning very early watching the sunrise at Mesa Arch in

Canyonlands

National Park. This is one of the most popular areas to photograph in

Canyonlands

- and you can see why. Many of you that know me also know that I like to take a lot of pictures. I had 200 images from that morning alone and narrowed it down to the 5 below that I felt were display worthy. These are long exposure,

HDR

images - hope you enjoy.

There were around 15+ people at the arch this morning but even with the crowd, the scene was amazing. A group from

Barefoot

Contessa

Photo Adventures

was there as part of their Arches,

Canyonlands

,

Moab

photo workshop. I have been hoping to attend a photo workshop (in fact that's what I want to Santa to bring me for Christmas) but haven't been able to find the right one that fit with my schedule. These folks were extremely friendly and ended up including me in their seminar at the arch. I'm looking at their schedule now to see if I can attend a future seminar. They had a lot of fun and definitely knew their stuff!

The magic of this location is how the arch glows a bright orange while the sun rises. It's beautiful to watch live. This picture below was one of the first ones taken in the morning - actually right before the sun had fully broken the horizon. This is an

HDR

of 2 images - both were over 8 seconds of exposure time.

This image was taken through the arch but zoomed in on the canyon below. I especially liked the way the sun rays glowed on many of these images. Cloud cover was perfect this morning!