Zion National Park

Living in Utah definitely has its advantages, with 5 national parks, high mountains, low deserts, it's got it's fair share of terrain.
One of my goals is to photograph at each of the national parks and capture the beauty that is so close to home. This August I made it to Canyonlands N.P. (specifically False Kiva and Mesa Arch) for a quick, yet long, overnight trip with a couple other photographers.
I was able to go to Zion with a local photographer group who call themselves Utah Night Owls. We focus on night photography and plan different group outings and this was the first big trip we had planned. The group included myself, Tom Jackson, Mindi Hamilton, Prajit Ramindran, Jeff Seal, Christa Lamb,  and Ed Chillington.
We left from Salt Lake Friday afternoon and came home Sunday morning. Friday night we shot at the Mt. Carmel tunnel, Weeping Rock, and Temple of the Sinawava. We shot until about 1:00 AM that night and got up early, well some of us, for the sunrise the next morning.
For sunrise we shot at Canyon Overlook Trail which is on the East side of the Mt. Carmel Tunnel. The sunrise was rather bland, meaning no clouds or awesome sky colors, but the sun glowing on the red rocks in the morning is always quite spectacular.
After shooting we had a late breakfast in Springville then Tom, Jeff, Prajit and I headed into the park for The Narrows for some good afternoon light. Of the four of us that headed into the park only Tom and I were man enough to walk in frigid cold water up the narrows to get some good photos. I will admit that I was a bit worried that I might get hypothermia because my gaiter socks were too large and would just fill up with freezing water.
Tom had to get back home that night so he dropped me off to meet up with the others at their hotel to shoot sunset and some more milky way and night shots. While others went to get something to eat, I staked out a good spot to photograph The Watchmen for sunset. The sunset was just amazing that night with the clouds bursting into a wonderful pink color for nearly 10 minutes.
A photographers hope is to have great clouds for sunset then for those clouds to clear up for night photography so that you have a great view of the stars and milky way. Lady luck was with us that night because that was exactly what happened.
We headed up to Checkerboard Mesa to try out some light painting, which didn't work out so well because the flood light had too narrow of a beam. That didn't stop us from getting some great milky way photos. After an hour or two there we headed over to the Grafton Cemetery and old schoolhouse. While others who had gotten an afternoon nap were anxiously shooting, I was exhausted and only got a few photos and I was ready for bed, but not before I set up my camera for a timelapse.
After a chilly night camping in the desert by myself I was picked up by Prajit and we headed home, leaving mild 60º weather and headed into a snowstorm on the way home.

See more photos on my website, keyword 'zion'

2 parks down, 3 to go.

Stay adventurous.