Natural Bridges National Monument

Last April we took advantage of a three-day weekend to run over to Canyon De Chelly National Monument.  One morning, on a whim, we headed north to drive through Monument Valley (which I wrote about here).  After driving the loop through Monument Valley and taking a few photos, we headed north with no real plan in mind.  Soon after passing through Mexican Hat, Utah, we started debating what to do next when I saw a sign for Natural Bridges National Monument.  A quick conversation later we were headed in that direction, not being sure - other than what the sign would imply - of what lay ahead...

At the Natural Bridges National Monument Visitor's Center we grabbed a map and learned that there was a loop drive through the park that stopped at overlooks for each of the three natural bridges within the park, with trails that lead down to each of the bridges.

The first stop was Sipapu Bridge.  Not satisfied with the view from the overlook, I decided to hike down.  The trail is .6 mile one way, with a 500 foot descent down to Sipapu Bridge, which, when taking into consideration that you're at about 6,000 feet elevation and the temperature is around 90 degrees...  Let's just say that I worked up quite a sweat by the time I got back to the car!...  Once I got to a place with a good, level view of the arch, I took a look at the scene with my ultra wide angle lens (a Nikkor 10-24 DX) and quickly realized that there was no way I could include the whole scene in one shot.  Fortunately, I had decided to bring my fisheye lens along as well.  Normally a fisheye lens introduces too much curvature to a scene, unless held relatively level to the horizon.  In this instance the scene was so wide that the only way I could include the arch in its entirety was to use the fisheye.  I carefully composed and took a few shots...

I then followed the trail further down and got closer the bottom of the ravine...

After climbing back up, I walked along the ridge a bit to get a different perspective, looking down at the arch.  I decided to keep shooting with the fisheye, to include as much of the landscape in the shot as possible, aiming to get that "sweeping" look to the shot...

Kachina Bridge was the next stop.  The hike down to Kachina Bridge was .75 mile, with a 400 ft descent, but not quite as strenuous as the one that lead to Sipapu Bridge, having a more gradual descent and longer switchbacks.  Once I made it to the floor of the ravine I approached the arch from the dry creek bed, stopping to take a few shots along the way...

Here I used the arch as a frame, capturing the window of blue sky against the beige rock...

I walked around a bit, through the arch and out the other side.  Looking back through Kachina Bridge, I pushed in tight, again using the bridge as a frame for the photo.  Later when I was processing photos from this trip, I thought that this particular shot would benefit from a black and white conversion...

The last stop was Owachomo Bridge.  The path to Owachomo Bridge was only .2 mile, with a descent of 180 feet.  As I got close the the bridge I noticed that the sun was close to the top of the arch, so I stopped the lens down to f22 and tried to position myself to where the edge of the sun just clipped the top of the arch, to get a small, tight sunburst...

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 10.5 DX Fisheye

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