Utah

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If you’ve ever been to Moab, Utah, which is your favorite park to visit? Is it Arches National Park? Is it Canyonlands National Park? or Dead Horse Point State Park? Right now, it’s hard for me to decide Every time I think about any of the parks, I just think about how hot it was. We were only in Moab for one full day but it was extremely hot and cloudless the whole time. As seen above. But if you ask Andrew, his was Canyonlands NP.

However, I wish we could of spent more time in Arches. We were there for sunrise and had a great time walking around some of the shorter trails like Devils Garden and Fiery Furnace Viewpoint. The whole plan was to spend sunrise and sunset shooting Arches and visit the other parks during the day. When it came time for sunset, we drove up to the entrance and found out it was was closed due to road construction. Womp Womp. There was no way to get in. I was hoping for this epic shot of Delicate Arch at sunset and we were going to stay to shoot the stars. So this whole trip, I didn’t not get to see Delicate Arch which seems like the main attraction 🙁 Now I have a reason to go back.

So this image was shot at sunrise at Courthouse Towers. I was super impressed by all the rock formations and the shadows that they were creating. I even heard a lady giving a tour while I was shooting this saying that there were over 2,000 arches in the park. Thats nuts-o. I think there are some arches in this image that the national park would consider an arch. Do you see them?

This was shot at f/11 at 1/160th of a second ISO 250.

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Walking around, I spotted this guy and I had to take a pic. Not only was the light perfect on him but he reminded me of Daryl from Walking Dead. But only if he was a photographer and not a walker slayer. What do you think?

At around sunset, Andrew and I found ourselves at the Big Chief Overlook. If you’re planning on visiting Dead Horse Point State Park in Moab, Utah, I’d highly recommend starting here. It’s at the very tipty top of the park but it’s great because you get these amazing PAN-oramic views of both sides of the park. The best was that I was able to follow the sunlight wherever it was going as it was setting. It can get crowded with people up there, but the ability to walk around the corner was amazing. I got so many cool shots from up there.  And how beautiful are these rocks against the falling sunlight? They were literally glowing.

Andrew and I spent a lot of time up there. We actually stayed up there way past sunset. Almost to the point where we could start seeing stars out. Not talking or anything, just enjoying the view. At one point, I told him to take some pics with his phone, so he took this one.

Pretty cool, huh? And all with no photo instruction from me. LOL. We joke that he’s this amazing photographer when in fact most of the pics he takes either has a finger in the corner or they’re really blurry. If you’ve seen some of his other iPhone pics, this one is definietly a major achievement. Seriously.

My settings for this image was F11 at 1/160th of a second. Super fast shutter speed to capture this beautiful moment. So glad I got to spend it with Andrew AND Daryl.

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Getting ready to head out to Utah again. 2 more weeks! Unfortunately, we won’t be visiting Zion National Park but other amazing places in Utah that I’ve never been. Actually, we’re flying in to Denver first then driving to Moab. How cool is that? I’m really looking forward to Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. I also heard theres a lot of cool stops in between Denver and Moab that are fun to see too. Have you ever been there? If so, give me some tips. Good hiking trails, cool photo spots, and where to get some good food. After Moab, Andrew and I will be spending the rest of the trip in Rocky Mountain National Park. A place I heard that you can get some serious altitude sickness. Really not looking forward to that. So if you have medicine recommendations for that, let me know too. I did a quick amazon search and was a little overwhelmed by how many options there were.

This image of Zion was taken in October 2014 at the Watchman. It seemed like just yesterday that we were there but we were lucky enough to hit the tail end of the autumn colors. It’s also one of the easiest sunset spots there is. Plenty of parking and a really short walk to get to this spot. It’s easy to find too. Just look for the huge group of photographers with tripods. You can’t miss it 🙂

The camera settings for this image is F22  at 1.6 seconds ISO 100 on the tripod. While the sun was still up when I shot this, I still wanted to try to make the Virgin River as smooth as possible. If I had the chance to shoot this again, I’d probably use my ICE Neutral Density filter to get an even longer exposure.

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Loved Zion National Park. We were there for a few days last year because we found this awesome travel deal to Las Vegas. Although I love the city with endless buffets, visiting Zion National Park was something like I’d never experienced before. Hope to go to Utah again soon to see more of the gorgeous state.

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Last night I went the Redskins game and had a blast. I was screaming, dancing and basically having the best time ever. Too bad we wont be going to the Super Bowl this year but I’m glad I got to experience a playoff game smile emoticon ‪#‎httr‬

BTW if you want to see what it was like, I snapchatted the whole thing: abpanphoto