I took a trip to southern Utah this past week to see the last of the fall colors. The weather turned cold and rainy so I headed to Valley of the Fire state park in Nevada. One of the interesting features for photographers of this park is the many small rock caves that light up brilliant colors in reflected light. I spent a number of hours photographing these little alcoves. One in particular, Windstone Arch, contains a small arch with intricate detail in the stone behind it. I waited for a gorup of photographers to shoot it and then crammed myself into the small space. I had to adjust my tripod lower just to fit it under the rim.
Later in the day, I spent time looking for a formation dubbed Crazy Hill. The directions said follow a ravine out of parking lot #3 so I followed one only to find out it was the wrong ravine. A fellow photographer later showed me the way. I just had to follow another ravine down a short distance form the parking lot. Did I feel stupid. Crazy Hill is made up of streaked rock of all different colors. It looks like a painter spilled any number of paint buckets.
My favorite place is Fire Wave. It is a red and white swirled rock that resembles the Wave formation in the Vermillion Cliffs. A quite colorful sunset greeted the few of us who came out to photograph that evening. Good photographs can be made from any number of angles here so I did photographs using the setting sun lighting up the rock and using the clouds lighting up after sunset.
There are few trails in the park so one of the best parts is finding features that no one else has discovered. There are any number of streaked rocks, fins, and other rock formations for photographers to work with in the park.
