East of the eastern entrance of Capitol Reef National Park Utah Highway 24 passes through an area of low Bentonite hills beyond which lies the sandstone uplift of the Caineville Reef. Not nearly as spectacular as its tortured and rocky sibling to the west, the Caineville Reef nonetheless offers a small world of sinuous abstraction and intimate landscape to those who enter its crooked realms.
A focal length of 280mm allowed for a narrowed field-of-view that incorporated a small section of Bentonite hills with a slice of the rising reef in the background. It also allowed for magnification and compression of the elements in the field-of-vision. An aperture of f/20 provided depth-of-field from the camera-to-subject distance and with a shutter speed of 1/15th second at ISO 100 gave me an overall medium exposure.
This land is administered by the Bureau of Land Management for the benefit of all of us. This is our public land, our common wealth. Its Beauty is our responsibility to preserve and protect. It is part of the larger San Rafael Desert which contains some of the most amazing scenery in Southern Utah.
Surreal.
Hey Bob. It’s always great to have you with us. What an interesting description, but very appropriate. There is much about the desert that evokes the surreal and this surreality is one of the many things that draws me so strongly to it; but I somehow think that this feeling may be more strongly sensed by those of us who did not grow up in this environment. No matter, the desert offers many examples to me of landscapes whose Beauty seems to come from their presentation of surreal elements. Thanks for your keen insight. Walk in Beauty.
Fabulous. I fail to understand how anyone can see such vistas and not be moved.
Hi David. Thank you very much for joining us for this conversation. I really appreciate your kind words; and I completely agree with your observation. Wherever I go in the great American Deserts I find myself responding with on-going emotion, in other words, being moved. There is something very primal and basic about the desert in all of its manifestations, which seems to serve for me as an enhancement of its intense Beauty.
Don, great image. Almost quilt-like with all the planes going this way and that. I also like the little hint of sky up high to provide a bit of an escape for the eye. It’s interesting that the perspective sort of fools the eye; it’s hard to know the scale here.
Hey Ray. I always look forward to your thoughtful insights and observations. Thanks, as always, for joining us. I especially appreciate your thoughts about the open space in the upper right and your question about “scale.” I might have chosen to eliminate that small blue triangle, but to do so would have forced me to remove some of the rock strata to the left which I felt were integral to the image. And the more I thought about it, the more I came to see the triangle as a way of adding perspective and scale as well. The line between the Bentonite layers and the background uplifts of the reef is obscured by the focal length of the lens which has magnified and compressed the elements we are seeing. The distance between the two areas is probably a mile or greater, yet it seems to be almost non-existent because of the compression. Thank you for bringing those aspects of the image to our attention. Stay safe and be well.
Thanks, again, Everyone for joining me and for offering us such profound thoughts and observations to consider. It’s often easy to see the Beauty of the desert in a very straightforward way, overlooking the very real abstractions which are fundamental to the ways we experience these amazing places.
Have an excellent week and stay safe and well. Walk in Beauty.