Lake Powell Sunset --- Again

Well, I went back to the original picture files and, sure enough, my forgetting the tripod left a slice missing in the middle of the composite below. I did find a third picture I could use to fill the gap after adjusting the zoom, exposure, and fixing the boat's wake. All in all, I'm satisfied with it. But it would have been simple with a tripod.

Don't forget - you can click on the picture to see a larger version.

Lake Powell Sunset

Returning to Page, AZ after a day of taking pictures at Bryce Canyon National Park in April 2008 I was lucky enough to find the turnoff to the Lake Powell overlook that Kathie had pointed out to me a couple of days before. I'm used to overlooks that are fifty feet or so off the road, like in the Smokies; this one was about a mile from the highway down a gravel road, but Kathie had told me it was a great view and she wasn't wrong.

The first shot is looking NNE over the Wahweap Marina towards Castle Rock. When the lake level is up, there's a channel across that penninsula from Wahweap Bay to Warm Creek Bay in the distance. Since my visit they've deepened the channel - Castle Rock Cut - by eight feet. When the lake level is high enough that the route's open, it cuts about 12 miles off the voyage upstream.

 

The second view is slightly right of the first - the marina is at the edge of the picture. I took this whole series of shots from the overlook sitting on the tailgate of my pick-'em-up truck. And, of course, the whole series reminds me how annoyed I was with myself for not bringing my tripod along. So many of these vistas cry out for a good panorama and I forgot the tripod! I may go back through my shots and see if I can create one after the fact - I'll let you know.

This last shot was shot slightly to the right of the second, looking east with Navajo Mountain on the horizon in the center - maybe I can align these three. At any rate, what I like best about these, I think, is the dark foreground with warmly lit scrub brush, gravel, etc. It was interesting to sit there for 45 min watching the light change and shooting while the sun sank behind me.

Illusion

I was looking for something else, but came across these pictures which I've always liked. One Saturday afternoon in the summer of 2002, Gillian and I grabbed our cameras and took the Suburban up to the Smoky Mountains to see what we could see. As usual, we headed north through Ellijay and Blue Mound, Murphy and Andrews then, just before entering the Nantahala Gorge, we turned north and headed up through Robbinsville towards Fontana Lake, and back east towards Bryson city. I think these pictures are of the Little Tennessee River, though I wouldn't bet my camera on it.

The thing that intrigued me about our roadside view of the river, and what these shots attempt to show, is the initial confusion and possibly even a little vertigo induced by looking down through the leaves from the riverbank and seeing clouds in the Carolina blue instead of the fast-moving, rocky stream you typically find in the Smokies.

 

Of course, the sky and clouds are simply reflections in an unusually wide section of the Little Tennessee on a bright day devoid of even the slightest hint of a breeze. It's interesting to me that, looking at the pictures, you can concentrate on the leaves and determine that you're looking down through the branches - then allow yourself to notice the sky in the background and experience that confusion again.