La Sal, Utah boasted the presence of 339 intrepid souls in the 2000 census. It sits astride Utah Highway 46 a few miles east of US 191 (South of Moab) and a few miles west of the Colorado state line where the road designation changes to Colorado Highway 90. Just inside Colorado, the road drops off the plateau, a part of the La Sal Mountains uplift, and into the broad valley of La Sal Creek on its winding way to the Dolores River. Across the valley, the rise of the plateau wall continuing eastward gives substance to the interior machinations of the Earth as it struggled to birth the great igneous blisters growing to the north.

A focal length of 300mm, medium telephotoland, allowed me to isolate an eroding section of the plateau wall, revealing the great runs of rock strata once submerged beneath an inland sea; strata now dotted with juniper and pinyon. It also allowed me to eliminate the sky as a distraction. An aperture of f/20 provided depth-of-field, given the camera-to-subject distance; and a shutter speed of 1/8th second at ISO 100 gave me an overall medium exposure. As I was caught up in the process, I had in mind the possibilities of this composition as an impressionistic rendering using various techniques available in several programs, in this instance a doouble exposure and PhotoShop.

While this Image is not of public lands, it represents a view into a private ranchland where vast open spaces are often the norm and the distinction between such land and public lands administered by agencies like the Bureau of Land Management is often blurrred. Beauty is always Beauty, wherever it is found.