After our morning shoot at Snow Canyon, we took a hot shower and then headed up through Cedar City (to stop off for some great pizza) on our way to our next stop, Great Basin National Park.  The drive from Utah into Nevada was interesting and we timed our entrance into the park as several vehicles were departing the campground.  

Yet again, we found ourselves another great campsite (of which we’ll say more later), at the campground nestled at the bottom of a canyon between two mountains.

The next day was laundry day, but the big question was where.  Our next big destination that we’d decided to keep was Toroweap on the north side of the Grand Canyon.  We had a 2-night camping permit I secured a few months earlier.  However, given the (mis)adventure and the screws issue with the small pantry, I decided to give the route description a careful read.  The high clearance vehicle issue wasn’t a problem.  Nor was the description that the last half mile would require a 4 wheel drive vehicle.   Unfortunately, the description also said to expect at least a couple of hours of very heavy washboard road.  After discussing it a bit, we decided to play it safe and not put Beast through that sort of ride until we got her fixed up.  So where to?

The next leg of our journey would take us to Kodachrome Basin State Park and thereabouts.  This was one of the fixed points from our schedule that we’d retained (with at least one night reserved at the campground in Kodachrome) so it was time to move.

We were exhausted from the previous day’s shooting, so took our time getting up and out of the Grand Staircase-Escalante.  The drive was beautiful from Escalante to Cannonville - as I said, Hwy. 12 is one of the most scenic stretches of road you’ll find.  In Cannonville we wound up stopping by the Cannonville Visitor Center and walked away with big smiles on our face for a couple of reasons.

Given that the day photographing at Devil’s Garden along Hole in the Rock Road was so productive, it shouldn’t surprise you that the day provided us with great examples for our shooting the shooter series.

The first pair of images comes from early in the day as the sun’s first rays were catching the clouds.  I’d noticed the clouds behind me after I finished another image in the other direction and I swung the camera around, framed an image, shot it and realized that Ann was by the left-hand edge of the frame (hopefully nice and warm in her bright red down jacket).

This is going to be a fairly lengthy, image intensive post with over 25 images.  As I was going through my images to see which ones lept out at me, or would otherwise help me tell the story of the day, I wound up working on lots of different images.  None said, “this is the image of the day” though many were not bad at all.   Ultimately I wound up thinking that it had been a mighty fine day of photography.  About as good as it gets short of realizing you’ve made one of the best images you’ve ever made.  So I decided that the post would not just be about what happened that day, but about how a day can progress photographically, if things are working out well.