Back in October, I spent some time in Southern Utah and Northern Arizona.  The photographic possibilities are almost endless in this special place of the country.  For nearly a week, I was based out the small town of Boulder, Utah for a workshop with James Kay.  What I love about Utah is the wide variety of landscapes that can be photographed there.  Anything from colorful aspen forests in the higher elevations to red rock sandstone deserts in the lower elevations.   

I was there in mid October when most of the aspen trees had lost most of their colorful leaves, but the fresh leaves on the ground made for pretty forest scenes focused on the ground.   

Balancing Rock

The sun was often shining for my visit to Southern Utah.  With the sun highlighting the forms and textures of the landscape, it can also make for interesting black and white photography.  However, the colorful landscapes can't be ignored either.  Although the aspen trees in the mountains had already lost their leaves, the cottonwoods still had plenty of their yellow leaves.   Cottonwood Curves

I love the "S" curve to the cottonwoods lining this creek!  One of the highlights of this week was getting different perspectives of the largest waterfall in Utah, Calf Creek Falls. We hiked the 3-mile one way hiking trail that goes to the bottom of the waterfall.  Like the picture below in the upper left, most people see the waterfall from this prospective.  Like me, James likes to photograph scenes that are off the beaten path and get different perspectives.  In the picture in the upper right, you can get a unique perspective the waterfall reflected in a pool of water off to the side.  

  Calf Creek Falls Pool at Calf Creek Falls

                                    Calf Creek Falls from above  

Many of the places we walked to were considered to be "off trail".  We hiked down from the highway and blazed our own trail down the sandstone slopes to get a birds eye view of the falls from the rim of the canyon.  We also hiked along a little used primitive trail and made numerous stream crossings to get Calf Creek just above the 200+ foot tall waterfall.  Here, there were nice intimate landscapes of the cascades and pools of water.  

Calf Creek Yellow Leaf

After the conclusion of the photo workshop, it was time for me to join up with Alex Noriega for a camping trip at a place called "White Pocket" in northern Arizona.  White Pocket is a hard to place that is only accessible by high clearance vehicles with the ability to drive on deep sand.  Once there, it is a strange landscape of oddly shaped white and red rocks.  

Brain Rock

It has the feeling of what it could be like on Mars. This rock seen above is known as "The Brain".   You can also see it in the distance in one of the pictures down below.  Our group also had a fun time doing some light painting on the rocks with the Milky Way here.  As you can see, I was fortunate to time the alignment of the Milky Way, a single tree and a long singular crack in the rock!  

White Pocket      Milky Way at the White Pocket