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.
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.
In my previous post I showed a “Green River Overlook”. It is the same “Green River” but a completely different overlook.
This one you can drive right up to with no problem, get out of your car, walk a short distance and take pictures.
But you do need dramatic light, clouds, clear air, and good technique.
I merged 12 different images into that panorama. The right hand side of the image was the most difficult part. Contrast between the sun and the sky was intense. 6 of the 12 images contained various exposures of the sun.
Murphy Point is a 3.6-mile round trip hike with excellent views off the western end of the Island in the Sky. The trail is downhill most of the way with only 150 feet of elevation to contend with.
I started hiking with with clouds brewing and they kept getting darker and darker. When I got to the overlook, I looked around and found a small ledge I could duck under if needed.
I needed.
Winds soon started howling at perhaps 40 miles per hour and would have blown a sturdy tripod with a my camera on on it had I not held on to it.
It started raining and sleeting so I ducked under the ledge I found. Sand was blowing all around like mad. Sand got into my camera and tripod despite the shelter and despite me attempting to shield them from the wind.
The wind, rain, and sleet lasted about 5-10 minutes. Then it became dead calm again.
I came out from the shelter announcing “there should be a rainbow”. And there was, right in front of me.
Plan the Shot
Just be at Murphy Point at sunset. Good luck with the clouds, light, and rainbow.
Curiously, I was at the visitor center about two hours earlier and asked the ranger if he could deliver a rainbow for me that evening.
Feature Image Details
These clouds were exceptionally low, discounting fog, the lowest I have ever seen.
This was a a simple shot.
I emerged from the shelter and started shooting with a fairly standard range zoom.
To find the apex of the rainbow, look 180 degrees from the sun. In this shot, there is no apex. just a very low end of a bow due to the low clouds.
At noon, in the summer, the rainbow will be beneath the horizon unless you are up in a plane or a high elevation looking down. From a plane, you might actually see a full circle, especially at sunrise or sunset.
On a double rainbow, the colors are inverted. Note that red is on the left in one rainbow and the right on the other.
The primary rainbow is on the inside. A secondary rainbow, on the outside, is caused by the light being reflected twice on the inside of the droplet before leaving it.
A secondary rainbow appears about 10° outside of the primary rainbow, with inverse order of colors.
Memory Trick
Roy G Biv
The colors are always in this order, one way or the other: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet
More Rainbow Details
Wikipedia has more Rainbow Details including this interesting tidbit.
A spectrum obtained using a glass prism and a point source is a continuum of wavelengths without bands. The number of colours that the human eye is able to distinguish in a spectrum is in the order of 100. Accordingly, the Munsell colour system (a 20th-century system for numerically describing colours, based on equal steps for human visual perception) distinguishes 100 hues. The apparent discreteness of main colours is an artefact of human perception and the exact number of main colours is a somewhat arbitrary choice.
Newton, who admitted his eyes were not very critical in distinguishing colours, originally (1672) divided the spectrum into five main colours: red, yellow, green, blue and violet. Later he included orange and indigo, giving seven main colours by analogy to the number of notes in a musical scale. Newton chose to divide the visible spectrum into seven colours out of a belief derived from the beliefs of the ancient Greek sophists, who thought there was a connection between the colours, the musical notes, the known objects in the Solar System, and the days of the week. Scholars have noted that what Newton regarded at the time as “blue” would today be regarded as cyan, and what Newton called “indigo” would today be considered blue.
Hmmm.
Roy G Cbv is not that easy to remember.
There are many other interesting facts in the above link.
Murphy Point is a 3.6-mile round trip hike with excellent views off the western end of the Island in the Sky. The trail is downhill most of the way with only 150 feet of elevation to contend with.
I hiked in with clouds brewing but wanted to get to the end by sunset. Winds all the way but the clouds kept getting darker and darker.
I looked around and found a small ledge I could duck under if needed.
I needed.
Winds soon started howling at perhaps 40 miles per hour and would have blown a sturdy tripod with a my camera on on it had I not held on to it.
It started raining and sleeting so I ducked under the ledge I found. Sand was blowing all around like mad. Sand got into my camera and tripod despite the shelter and despite me attempting to shield them from the wind.
The wind, rain, and sleet lasted about 5-10 minutes. Then it became dead calm again.
I came out from the shelter announcing “there should be a rainbow”. And there was, right in front of me.
Plan the Shot
Just be at Murphy Point at sunset. Good luck with the clouds, light, and rainbow.
Curiously, I was at the visitor center about two hours earlier and asked the ranger if he could deliver a rainbow for me that evening.
Feature Image Details
This was a a simple shot.
I emerged from the shelter and started shooting with a fairly standard range zoom.
Arches national Park is a red-rock wonderland in Southern Utah. The park has over 2,000 natural stone arches, in addition to hundreds of soaring pinnacles, massive fins and giant balanced rocks.
Double Arch is in the very popular Windows section of the park.
All the literature that I have read suggests one cannot get a “sunset” image from this location.
But there it is. Double Arch at Sunset.
OK but …
Yes, the sun is not in the image.
Does it matter?
I estimate that 85% of the time the best image at sunrise and sunset are looking away from the sun.
In this case, I had spectacular light in the East opposite the Sun.
Feature Image Details
This is not an easy shot. It is a blend of 8 images of varying exposures some for the inside of the arch, and some for the clouds.
Arches national Park is a red-rock wonderland in Southern Utah. The park has over 2,000 natural stone arches, in addition to hundreds of soaring pinnacles, massive fins and giant balanced rocks.
The hike to Delicate Arch is a 3.1 round trip hike with a 480 foot climb. It’s rated moderate.
The hike is very popular and you will almost never have the place to yourself.
If your mission is to have a great hike you cannot go wrong in any kind of reasonable weather. But if your goal is to get a great image things are much more difficult. You need good light with good clouds. You need to be at the top about an hour before sunset.
Hopefully there will not be too many people milling around or you have to edit them out in Photoshop.
Wait. There’s more. The arch is in shadow of mountains at sunset starting mid-April.
I took this panorama on April 13. You can see the shadows closing in to the right and in the foreground up to the base of the arch.
Feature Image Details
I took 8 images, overlapped heavily, and stiched then together in Lightroom.
Visitors can walk down the deserted streets of a town that once had a population of nearly 10,000 people. The town is named for Waterman S. Body (William Bodey), who had discovered small amounts of gold in hills north of Mono Lake. In 1875, a mine cave-in revealed pay dirt, which led to purchase of the mine by the Standard Company in 1877. People flocked to Bodie and transformed it from a town of a few dozen to a boomtown.
Only a small part of the town survives, preserved in a state of “arrested decay.” Interiors remain as they were left and stocked with goods. Designated as a National Historic Site and a State Historic Park in 1962, the remains of Bodie are being preserved in a state of “arrested decay”. Today this once thriving mining camp is visited by tourists, howling winds and an occasional ghost.
Access
Winter hours 9am to 4pm (November 4th to April 15th)
Summer hours 9am-6pm (April 15th to November 3rd )
In the winter, you may need a snowmobile to get in. The road is not plowed.
The only access at sunrise, sunset, and the interiors of the building is by permit. The cost is steep. My wife Liz and I went on a photography tour at $800 a pop.
The tour gave us access at sunrise, sunset, and the interiors of the building at mid-day.
Those articles discuss the importance of very wide angle lenses and tilt-shift lenses for photographing Bodie and the interiors of buildings in general.
MishMoments is a subset of MishGEA. Those interested in photography only should follow MishMoments.
This is just the beginning of my Bodie series.
There is much more coming up: Sam Leon’s saloon, the morgue, the Methodist church, a Shell gas station, the schoolhouse, the barbershop, other buildings, and milky way shots at night.
