It seems like a lifetime ago now, but a few years ago I was driving bus for a tour group from Monument Valley back to Page, Arizona for the night. Along the way, we stopped to take photos of the sunset, and much to my surprise, we were greeted by a dragon (or so it seemed). Sometimes the cloud formations inspire, treat and completely take us by surprise. This was such an occasion. It was a memorable trip, and the friends I made along the way was worth it. Beware the dragon….
A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to spend a week at the Grand Canyon South Rim. After work, I took the time to visit my old stomping grounds. I worked at the South Rim several years ago, and it was awesome to see the Grand Canyon again. This was during the late winter, or early spring, and I decided to walk the Rim Trail near the Bright Angel Lodge to catch sunset. I was happy to see the Canyon in all its spleandor. This image is available for purchase on ArtPal.
Enjoy
Back in my tour driving days, I used to wait at Goulding’s Trading Post, just north of Monument Valley, for my tour group to return from their guided tour of Monument Valley. I had many opportunities to enjoy the sunset there. On one such trip, I captured this image. I love how the light and shadows play on the peaks.
This image is available for purchase on my ArtPal site.
Enjoy,
Kelly
Last week, I hiked along the Middle Emerald Pools Trail. This trail has been closed since the trail head was washed out in a flood in 2010. It was reopened last September after years of repairs and stabilization work in the trailhead area. It was close to sunset when I captured this image of the Virgin River looking towards The Great White Throne. This is also part of the Weekend Sky challenge .
This image is available as a print on Art Pal: Virgin River
Enjoy!
Back in 2008, I went on a camping trip in the Joshua Tree forest in the Beaver Dam Wilderness Area, just east of Beaver Dam, Arizona. Â It was a relaxing weekend and lots of exploring opportunities were enjoyed. Â Just after setting up camp, I was taking photos (lots of them) of the Joshua Trees, the desert, cliffs, and of course, the sky.
This post is my entry in Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge of camping.
When I first photographed the clouds, this first one looked kind of weird, almost like a hand had been pushed down on the sky and made the clouds.
This second image is even stranger. Â I was taking photos of the sunset and really didn’t notice the formation in the clouds until several years later while looking at this image on a large screen. Â Needless to say, I was dumbfounded when I saw it.
Crazy, huh? Â Any ideas on what it could be, besides a random cloud? Â Please let me know what you think.
Kelly
Spending some time in Grand Canyon for work, I just had to get out to the rim for sunset. Here is what I found at Mather Point:
Enjoy!!
First, I need to apologize for my lack of posting lately, it seems that life has been in the way of photographing anything recently. Â I’ll try to get out photgraphing more often so I can post more often.
Anyway, recently I’ve been wanting to photograph the Milky Way, and the best time to do it is during or close to a New Moon. Â The most recent one was this past Sunday, so Monday night I went up on a hill near Zion National Park to capture our Galaxy in all its glory. Â I got up there before sunset to get everything ready for the night’s adventure. Â While I was waiting for it to get dark, I decided to get some sunset photos of the surrounding peaks.
Here is the Watchman in all its splendor:
Also, here is the West Temple, with neighboring Mount Kinesava:
Not to be out done, but here are the Eagle’s Crags: 
I also chanced upon some wild flowers that were still in bloom: Â 
When it came time to actually photograph the Milky Way, I spent the next couple of hours photographing away, enjoying the view of the night sky, and basking in the solitude of the mountain. Â When I got home and processed the images, I realized that my camera was out of focus the entire time! Â The thumbnails looked great, but at full size every image was fuzzy and out of focus except the sunset shots.
Life can be out of focus sometimes, even though we’re looking at it and everything seems to be in focus and on track, then we view the experiences from a distance or as a thumbnail it seems to be in focus, but when analyzed and viewed up close, its blurry and out of focus and needs to be fixed or done over. Â The only real way to change that is to get out there and redo what should have been done the first time, having learned from that mistake and made everything in focus and better all around.
I did the only thing I could do, and that was to go back out and try again. Â Even though the moon is waxing and staying up longer, it didn’t affect the images in any way. Â In fact it helped. Â I was having the same issue as before of having the camera out of focus, so I focused on the moon and got some great shots of the Waxing Crescent Moon.
The bright star below the moon  on the horizon is actually Venus!  Anyway, I got settled in, and had a small red lantern on so I wouldn’t be stumbling all over the place in the dark.  Well, I later discovered there were some unexpected benefits from that light.  I was also able to fix the focus issue of the camera and got some beautiful shots of the night sky.
Here is the Milky Way in all its beauty and splendor!
Enjoy!
Kelly
I was looking for the perfect sunset to a great day, and I found this photo. Â Taken in the Beaver Dam Wilderness Area east of Mesquite, Nevada.
Enjoy,
Kelly
I went out on Friday night to get photos of the sunset. Well, there wasn’t much of a sunset because there were several thunderstorms brewing. As luck would have it, I discovered how to use the video function on my camera.
The resolution from a grabbed image from the video is about 1900×1080, which is about 70k or about a 2MB camera. Not that impressive, but I’m happy with some of the images I extracted from the video. I like this one the best:
Enjoy!
This is Mountain of the Sun at sunset last week. What a beautiful place to live! Come by and visit!!!
Kelly Guymon Photography 