The last family photography trip that we took was to Capitol Reef National Park, Utah in 2010. This image was taken from our campsite on the first day there. The road that you see is part of a 57.6 mile loop that runs through the Capitol Reef National Park. It is a long rough road that travels through some of the best scenery in Utah. The nearest that we were to any civilization was the small town of Torrey, which was the only place that had any cell phone service at all.

Not far from our campsite was this overlook. The sun was setting behind us and we were all shooting this fantastic scenic landscape. We had a dust storm the day before this image was taken, so the mountain in the background is a bit faded as a result.

Utah is one of the best places for night photography. There is no light pollution and the night skies are very dark and clear. There are very few films that work well with real long exposures, but my favorite film to use at night is Provia 100F. Taking exposures this long will still result in reciprocity failure and have color shifts. The actual slide had a heavy red color cast to the overall image. However, it wasn’t so bad that it couldn’t be corrected in post processing.
At the campground there were a lot of dead trees nearby. I set the camera at an upward angle facing the north star. There was a crescent moon setting behind me and it gave enough natural light to illuminate the scene. This was about a 6 hour exposure at f/8.

With the exception of about one motorcyclist, we had the entire park all to ourselves. If you happened to break down here, you could find yourself being stranded for days before seeing anyone. This area of Cathedral Valley is called “The Junction”. It is where a cross road that travels to different areas of the park.

Not far from the junction, was this uniquely lit hoodoo. We noted how the light was illuminating the rock formation as it created depth between the area that was lit and the area that wasn’t. We came back to this exact location the next day and worked on photographing this spot. The light didn’t last long, but it was long enough to get this capture.

Along the rough road to the campground, there was a “V” in the wall of rock, and beyond it was the setting sun. We had set up and photographed this scene before returning to camp.

I would love to get a chance to return to Utah to photograph the place even more, and I am not sure when that will happen again. These trips were expensive, and they are not something that I would want to take on my own. At least I have the memories of beautiful scenery that we had visited.

All images taken in 2010 on Mamiya RZ67 Pro II