Below is a photo of The Gossips in Arches National Park. I have other edits of this photo and I may have even posted one in the past, but they all look a lot different. The sun is behind the gossips in this photo creating a very bright sky. The out-of-camera photo is considerably darker, making it difficult to see much detail.
This photo was taken last June during our trip to the Moab area. On our way up the Moab Rim Trail, we saw two dogs bounding up the hill. In this picture, Marie has stopped to take a photo of one of the dogs.
Below is another photo taken during our visit to the Island in the Sky in Canyonlands National Park. I eventually hiked around that hill to the edge of the rim to get some other photos.
This one was tone mapped with Mantiuk ’06. I set the opacity of the tone layer to 85 percent and did some further partial masking of the sky and some of the overly white areas in the foreground.
Here’s a crop which is interesting too…
I had a rather dingy looking picture of Candlestick Tower that I took during our visit to the Moab area last June. I decided to see what tone mapping using Mantiuk ’06 would do for it…
Below is the cleaned up and cropped version that I started with. I edited out the sensor dust to make an image to feed the tone mapping operator. It seems that Mantiuk ’06 is really good at finding sensor dust in the sky. When used on a person, it’ll find the smallest skin blemishes or even perspiration that you might not even notice in the starting photo.
As a consequence, I often do a significant amount of masking. If the image has people in it, I’ll mask them out of the tone layer. In the above photo, I masked the sky out entirely as it had entirely too much noise for my liking. I will sometimes partially mask some of the really intense highlights too.
I made another pass through some of Marilyn’s photos last night and found a few that I like of Bow Tie Arch and one of Corona Arch.
Marilyn took this photo, in which I appear, on our hike out to the area in the morning. It appears that I was taking a photo of Marilyn at the same time as she was taking a photo of me!
This photo of Bow Tie Arch was taken late in the day. It shows more of the area than the rest of the photos. Corona Arch does not appear in this photo, but is only a short ways off to the right. When hiking out to Corona Arch, you pass in front of Bow Tie Arch, going from left to right in this photo. One of the things that I immediately found interesting about the scene was the discoloration or perhaps growth (lichen, perhaps?) where the water runs down when it rains. The dark streaks are either black or a deep blue depending upon how you view it.
Here’s a closer look at Bow Tie Arch and two of the small dry waterfalls below it.
Finally, here’s a shot of Corona Arch. What surprised me about this photo was how bright and golden the arch appeared even though the sun was on the other side. We had gone back later in the day to get photos of the arch from this angle thinking that the photos would be better. But this one was taken in the morning.
On Wednesday during our week’s stay in the Moab area during June of 2012, we hiked the Moab Rim Trail. Known locally as “Moab’s Stairmaster”, it climbs over eight hundred feet within the first mile. The trail description at the bottom exaggerates a bit, claiming an elevation gain of one thousand feet in a mile. It is popular with some of the locals though because it’s close to town and provides a heck of a workout just hiking up to the rim and back, about two miles total.
The Moab Rim Trail is actually a jeep trail and a very difficult one at that. Here is how the sign at the bottom describes it:
The Moab Rim Route follow the Kayenta sandstone ledge from here to the rim above the town of Moab. The route is used by hikers, bikers, motorcyclists, and jeepers. It gains 1,000 feet in elevation in about a mile. The ledges make it particularly challenging to motorized vehicles. The Moab Rim Route is rated as a “4+” route by the Moab Red Rock Four-Wheelers Jeep Club – its most difficult rating. (4+ trails are not suitable for stock vehicles, and over 10% of modified vehicles can expect “major mechanical difficulties”.)
Hopefully, this shot will help to convey a sense of how steep the first section is. Even though it’s steep, the footing is excellent.
Marie took this photo of her Mom along the way:
Marie took this photo of herself standing on the rim. The town of Moab is in the background.
When I got up to the rim, I saw a plant standing alone with these yellow flowers:
Marilyn and Marie amidst the sandstone:
Marilyn took this photo of Marie hiking along side large potholes in the sandstone.
Marie took this photo of the trail wending its way into a valley.
Marie, admiring the view just shortly before she and her Mom turned around:
I continued on and saw, from afar, this pass through the wall of rock. I don’t know if there is a trail which goes through that pass or not. I’d like to hike closer sometime to find out.
Another view from a bit further on down the trail. At this point, I was perhaps halfway around the loop that would bring back to the girls.
Another shot from the same location:
A shot looking back in the direction from where I had come. I didn’t hike either of those roads visible off in the distance though. But I would like to walk them sometime though.
I eventually met up again with Marilyn and Marie and we hiked back to the rim together. Here’s Marilyn somewhere near the rim:
A view of Arches National Park from the Moab Rim. The arch visible in this photo is the South Window, I think.
Marilyn took this photo of Moab, below, and the La Sals in the distance.
A view of the Colorado River while descending the Moab Rim Trail:
The Aarchway Inn has two nice murals too, but they’re quite a lot more tranquil than a scene of a giant spider chasing a pack of mountain bikers.
With the right optics, you can sort of see these murals all the way from the Moab Rim. This shot, below, was taken with my NEX-7 with the lens all the way out at 200mm. I had to crop it a lot too to get a photo of the motel. That busy highway in this photo is US 191. The area behind the hotel is pretty nice though. There’s an exercise area, a cabana with grill, and some flowerbeds. If you look closely, you can see two murals on the back walls of the north and south wings of the motel.
Here’s the mural on the northernmost wall:
This is the mural on the wall to the south:
A few of the flowers not far from these murals:
