Quail Creek State Park is very close to where we live. It’s a small but popular park for fishing, boating, kayaking, and hiking.
Quail Creek reservoir was completed in 1985 to provide irrigation and culinary water to the St. George area. Most of the water in the reservoir does not come from Quail Creek but is diverted from the Virgin River and transported through a buried pipeline.
Two dams form the reservoir. The main dam is an earth-fill embankment dam. The south dam is a roller compacted concrete dam, constructed to replace the original earth-fill dam that failed in the early hours of New Year’s Day 1989.
The maximum depth of Quail Creek can reach 120 feet, so it is cold enough to sustain the stocked rainbow trout, bullhead catfish, and crappie. Largemouth bass, which is also stocked, and bluegill thrive in the warmer, upper layers of the reservoir.
Standing In the Creek
Image Details
I used a Canon 100-400 MM F 4.5-5.6 L Lens at 400mm, F13, for 1/250 second at ISO 1000 on my EOS R5 mirrorless camera.
The ducks were on the fringe of an area where the top of the mountain was reflected in the water near sunset as golden yellow while the sky reflected blue. The light was such that tiny waves reflected the mountain and not the sky.
When the ducks dived, they left concentric ripples. In the image above three ducks dove for minnows at nearly the same time leaving behind concentric circles of varying sizes.
I am a bit disappointed in the rendition above as the JPEG file distorted the blue and the image is a bit sharper than it might look.
Sea Gulls at Sunset
Other Quail Creek State Park Images
- Quail Creek State Park, Sunset Reflections From Overlook
- Quail Creek State Park, Mouth of Creek, Sunset Reflections
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Mish
WOW!! This is spectacular!! You are an amazing photographer.
Diane Ray
Lovely! I made some similar photos on the south San Francisco bay at the old salt evaporators-very shallow water makes for perfect concentric rings around the birds. BTW I’ve found changing the default settings on the conversion/resize helps keep close to the PSD look, PS does strange things when resizing. I like bicubic smoother. Thank you for sharing.
Please explain this “BTW I’ve found changing the default settings on the conversion/resize helps keep close to the PSD look, PS does strange things when resizing. I like bicubic smoother. Thank you for sharing.”
Thanks much Mish
I edit in Photoshop, still not used to Lightroom… anyway, when I make a copy in PS to be saved at a reduced size JPG-in the “image size” dialog box there’s an option to resample several different ways-bicubic smoother being-for me-the cleanest option-no artifacts or changes to the levels. That’s where I first noticed what happens with the new copy-comparing the levels of the old and new. PS changes things for us…hope that explains this ok!
Thanks