Delicate Painting

Delicate Painting – Our Night on Delicate Arch

One of our sunset locations on our Moab Utah adventure a couple of years ago was Arches National Park, specifically, we wanted to shoot the Delicate Arch at Sunset. Delicate Arch is probably the most famous known Arch in the park and has become a widely recognized symbol of the state of Utah. The light opening beneath the arch is 64 feet high and 45 feet wide, making it the largest free-standing arch in the park. The Light Painting shot does not give a good representation of the size of this beauty. Maybe the shot below will give a better perspective of the size and popularity of this Arch before sunset, this was a fisheye shot of the arch and rim, with buddy Dave Wilson in the right foreground getting his gear ready, notice the size of the people near the base of the Arch for scale.

Painting the Arch-  Earlier in the trip our NxNW group ran into another workshop in the Ghost Town of Cisco Utah, Justin Balog happened to know a couple of the photogs running the workshop. At Delicate arch, we ran into the same workshop again but this time Dave Black (renowned photog and famous light painting photographer) was at the Arch, his workshop was doing a Light Painting shoot at the Arch after sundown, Justin did some schmoozing with the workshop and before we knew it the NxNW group was invited to hang around for the Light Painting session as long as we stayed behind their workshop, this was definitely an experience we were excited about for sure.

We hung around and had one hell of a good time when it was all said and done. We were far down in the bowl of the arch, the footing was a bit precarious (dark and steep) and I actually cracked my top glass on my 5D Mark III that evening. The shot above was during the session, the Dave Black workshop is pictured in the frame, Dave black was way on top of the rim of the arch with some very powerful light’s light painting the Arch and calling out camera settings for each attempt. The sky was filled with stars and the moon had not risen yet, a beautiful night indeed. Having never did this before I thought I came away with a decent keeper when it was all said and done. This was in the archives but a good reminder of how much fun these trips can be, and since we are only a few days away from the next adventure I thought this would be a good time to share and get warmed up for the Grand Teton National Park adventure!

Thanks for Stopping!