Arches and Moab

Derek Regensburger
March 12, 2021
Landscape / Utah

I took a quick jaunt to the Moab area this past weekend. Out here in the West, March comes in like a lamb and goes out like a lion so the first week of March is a perfect time to camp and do some hiking in the redrock country of Utah. I visited Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. I also took a quick hike through Kane Creek near the Colorado River behind Moab.

I took in the sunrise at Broken Arch in Arches and was treated to a beautiful show. The arch glows a lovely golden color at sunrise. I then took the quick side trip to Sand Dune Arch. It is a cool arch but hard to photograph well given the towering sandstone fins surrounding it.

I then hiked over to Landscape Arch and Pine Tree Arch in the nearby Devil’s Garden area. Pine Tree Arch lakes for a cool shot in the morning as the light hits the pine trees growing inside of it.

In the afternoon, I hiked to Corona Arch which is located just outside the park along the Potash Road. It is a short 1.5 mile hike to a very large almost free-standing arch. I always like this hike since you get to climb a rope ladder and scurry along a steel cable to get up to the arch. I stopped and photographed Bowtie Arch which is a cool pothole arch just before reaching Corona Arch itself.

I ended the day with a quick hike to Poison Spider Mesa. I had never been to this area before and it looks like it would be worth returning to the area. It is full of huge petrified dunes or large sandstone knobs that would make for some interesting compositions. There is also a great view of the LaSal Mountains and the Behind the Rocks area. Although it is a rough road that is frequented by ATVers (all too common in Moab now), the hike is a steep but pleasant enough one up the road. It is about 1.5-2 miles to the mesa.

The last day of the trip I spent in Canyonlands National Park. I went to Aztec Butte and checked out the ruins up along the cliffs of the buttes. It was worth the steep hike up the side of the butte. The view from atop the butte is stunning. The ruins are cool but unfortunately the famous one behind a little arch has fallen down and been remade into a boring wall. I ended the afternoon with a trip to Grand View Point to check out the view at sunset.

Sony 12-24 f2.8 Lens

I rented a Sony 12-24 f2.8 lens for the trip and it performed spectacularly well. There often aren’t uses for 12mm lenses outside of the realm of architectural photography, so it was fun to put this lens to the test underneath a few giant arches. The lens is extremely sharp and only shows signs of decreasing sharpness in the extreme corners. It is a heavy lens but is lighter than the monstrous Canon 11-24 f 4 lens and is 1 stop brighter. The Sony lens shows little chromatic aberration and is a very good lens for astrophotography and landscape photography. It does suffer from some flaring even without the sun in the frame so I had to be careful at certain angles. Overall, this lens performed very admirably and is something that should make it into many Sony photographers’ bags.